


Kurago

by RoryKurago



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coping Mechanisms, Gen, Growing up Jaeger, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, J-Tech, Jaeger Pilots, POV Original Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Knifehead, Sydney Shatterdome, Tattoos and scars as record-keeping, original character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2018-02-06 14:21:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 52,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1861194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name is Dingo Kurago, and she’s one of the smallest Jaegers built so far--bound for the soon-to-be-completed Sydney ‘dome alongside Lucky Seven and the recently-refitted Tasmania Venator. It’s almost four years since K-Day. Jaegers are titans. Rangers are heroes. But being a hero doesn’t make you indestructible: there are a dozen names on the Rangers’ Memorial Roll, and a hundred ways to fall from grace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2017A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurago and her pilots arrive (back) in Sydney; Scott Hansen has more to say about his nephew than he should; the ghost of Tasmania Venator refuses to be shaken loose of her moorings; Shatterdome family dramas drift to the surface; and the Serizawa Scale expands.

###  2017: Hong Kong

 

They’re freshly nineteen, they’re Jaeger Rangers and their mother is dead. But they survived Hell Week and Belobog. (Marshal Pentecost’s meditation sessions. Instructor Kodai’s diatribes on the Seven Virtues. Godoy’s mechanics pop quizzes.) They’re brushed up all neat-like for Pentecost to pin their wings to their chest and there’s a Class-A photo: them, the Beckets, Javi and Guill, and the Seos. 2016, winter semester, welcome to the fucking war.

The UN say, _congratulations_

and the twins think, _For what?_

 

… …

_You’re eighteen and your mother is dead. You’re instructed not to answer the telephone._

… …

 

She’s a second-gen Mark-II. Red.Full-bore steel only on 40% of her body (— _a 26% average landspeed increase, Commanders_ —). More accurate servos, triple-barrel joints. She doesn’t have a name

The twins meet her in Hong Kong ahead of her transfer to the still-incomplete Sydney ‘dome and even the persistent cold of the Staging Area can’t dampen the humming in their chests like reactors coming online. She’s only two-hundred-twenty foot and two point two (eight three) megatonne. That’s light on for a Jaeger. They’re not worried, even if the media are. (Will be. When they find out.) It’s been three years since K-Day and the Australian division, with so much ground to cover, is experimenting with designs. What they’ve come up with makes her supervisors’ knees weak with worry and fills her pilots up with exhilaration so big that breathing is like they’re ten thousand feet under the sea. Her designs are Japanese; her insides are German and Swiss; her labour was Chinese and Australian. Her pilots are Australian too. Just babies, really. RAAF brats. Freshly nineteen. Their uniforms still stink of the starch-snow-and-wet-carpet air of the Academy.

They’re standing on a midlevel gantry opposite the Jaeger, rugged up in newly-issued Australian Division jackets listening to the eggheads rattling off her specs but it’s mostly in one ear and out the other. How can anyone listen when they’re in the presence of _her_?

She’s the science shop’s pet: a page taken from Tacit Ronin and scaled down, Earth’s defence in miniature. ( _Miniature like a twenty-two calibre to a thirty-thirty_ , mutters one twin to the other.) Improved synapse system for reduced lag-time in impulse relay. Lighter motion rig. Experimental induction-heat blades embedded in each forearm. New iteration gyros. No ranged weaponry, but she’s not meant for that.

If J-Tech is right, she’ll be able to weave, knee and elbow like a _nak-muay_.

She’s meant to be small. She’s meant to be fast. If she takes more than a solid hit to the faceplate, her pilots will be whistling Matilda all the way to the afterlife. And she’s the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen.

It’s the first time the twins have met Kurago, and for the first time in years the future is just so big and bright they can barely breathe.

 

 

Before that:

Twenty-two hours in transit, give or take, from Kodiak Island to Hong Kong.

Aching muscles. Gritty eyes. By the time they stumble off the Sikorsky they didn’t care where they were so long as it had a bed. (One, two, doesn’t matter. Two pillows would be nice.) ‘Home is where the food’s hot, the sheets are clean and nobody complains when you sing along to the radio.’ Hong Kong’s as much that as any of the rest.

It’s Sorvino waiting beyond the down-draft (no sign of his co-pilot). More lines around his eyes than on Kodiak and gaunter cheeks but his jumpboots are immaculate. He interrupts their muttering about pillows and spoons and longhaul helicopter yoga-tetris to embrace one of them then the other.

 _I saw your girl,_ he says briskly. _She got here just ahead of you. Smaller than you expect, isn’t she? Gorgeous lines though. Nice lines of some of those Jap techs too; don’t suppose you know if any of ‘em like older blokes?_ He laughs and jostles the twin whose shoulders he still clasps. _Ah well. Guess we’ll have to send ‘em back to Ronin sooner or later._

They want to go straight to the hangar to check on her but there’s housekeeping to be done first. Hold your horses. Quarters first, then the tour, then they’ve got some intros to do. His Ranger tab is bright on the breast of his coveralls. A flicker of consternation sparks at the back of their minds. Neither is sure who had it first.

Sorvino waves a hand and tells them to relax, there’s nothing official for the first few days. He and Captain Collier just had to escort a couple of journos around. _Think maybe they caught a whiff we had new Rangers coming home to roost and thought they’d get the drop on you._ His grin turns sharkish. _Don’t worry. Me and ya dad chased ‘em off. Vultures. Speaking of the old coot,_ he adds, _he’s retired to quarters, but he said to tell you ‘hello, welcome home’ and he’ll meet you for dinner._

Probably. It’s implied but not said.

 _It’s a bad day,_ he adds.

They don’t miss the sideways twitch of his moustache, or the flick of his eyes past them to the sea. The decal on his sleeve is still yellow and black but it isn’t Venator’s: the Corps has already patched her over. The change should help—but it’s Venator’s colours for the rechristened Kelly Nomad and that’s too much like a kick to the guts. They can give her a new skin but underneath she’ll always be Tasmania Venator, and her ghosts are Collier.Kodiak looms large in their memory: scotch and blood tinny in their mouths from bitten cheeks and fingernails, muscles gone stiff from sitting at a tiny common-room table so long their forearms stuck to the metal—

The twins’ faces are stony when they ask to see their quarters first.

 

… …

_You’re nineteen and you’re a Jaeger pilot._

… …

 

The bunks aren’t made up and the windows look out to sea as if they need reminding, but it’s theirs. They drop their kitbags on the bottom bunk and follow Sorvino.

 

 

The Academy was a concrete and steel tower, but Hong Kong is built into a mountain.

 _Kaiju Science, air support squadron, Motorpool and Strike Trooper facilities are all integrated_ , Sorvino tells them as he points out elevators, coloured destination lines on the floor, emergency ladders. Marshal Pentecost did good work on the Working Group and their tight-fisted budgeting. That had been when he was still a consultant. As a Ranger… The weight of their own tabs is monolithic. The brush of their elbows as they walk is learnt: share the weight. Share the load.

Techs pause to salute them as they go. Only after the first two hide smiles do the twins remember they’re not supposed to salute back. The heat up the back of their necks has nothing to do with the downy jackets a Q-Store clerk thrusts at them.

 

 

They come up against a man sauntering out of the mess picking bits of bamboo from his teeth and he’s— Tahnee’s brows draw together. The question’s in her sidelong look at Dana. Is that…?

Tall, broad in the shoulder, lean in the hips, loud: _the food in this bloody rockpile—Sorvino, mate!_ He walks with his weight forward on the balls of his feet but shoulders back and chin up like it’s been ground into him, even swaggering hips-first as he does. Blue eyes and hair reddish in the fluoros. _What do we have here? What’d the Cat-II drag in this time,_ he says around too many teeth, looking them over.

Sorvino gestures to them; his god-daughters. Daz’s girls. He introduces the man as a colleague. RAAF, PPDC Pilot Programme 2015. Ranger Scott Hansen.

 _More Colliers? Any more of you lot and someone’ll have to talk to the Marshal about having you spayed._ He’s got a nephew around here too (somewhere), he says; a glance both ways down the corridor turns up nothing. They might have seen him around—skinny little runt slathered in iodine? Loves Rangers. (Jaegers.) Might be interesting for them to meet, but scrapper’s got applications for an Advance Learning Program to write. _And a right ratbag he is about it too_ , he laughs. _Thirteen and a temper on him like a bloody Kaiju. Doesn’t see the point of school when all he wants t’ be is a Ranger._ He’s hoping the Academy will sort the kid out, but it’d be a bloody miracle. Scott’s laugh is sharper than it sounds on camera and his eyes are paler blue, but there’s a warmth to his calluses when he shakes Dana’s hand, and his offer to take them out to check out the Bone Slums later sounds genuine.

 

 

Meet-and-Greet at fourteen-hundred, Sorvino told them when he dropped them back at their doorstep. (Time enough to grab some rack time if they want, he added with a wink. If not, the cupboard over the sink is already stocked with half-decent tea and there’s longlife milk in the mini-fridge.) They smiled wearily. But there’s a rule: no napping until after Set-Up.

So Dana cues up MTV on the holoscreen. Tahnee cracks the shoebox shoved into the largest of their bags. Inside is a mess of photos, rolled up posters, and The Map. When they were kids The Map was tacked up on the wall in their room on the Collier property, wedged between one of Grandpa’s ink sketches of the main house and Tahnee’s showjumping posters. Pins to mark the important places:

Red for places they lived. Green for holidays. Black for deployments.

September 2014 they started adding blue.

The walls here are concrete but someone found them a corkboard somewhere. Tahnee rolls out The Map and tacks it down but when she’s done she waits: This is a ritual. Only when Dana joins her at the desk does she add a second pin to the rusty puncture over _Hong Kong._ Blue and red. Home. Sort of. The sheets are clean and the walls are soundproofed. Two of three’s not a bad start.

The Map goes up between the bunks and the window, opposite an empty space. The poster of Venator stays rolled.

 

 

There are five Ranger teams in Sydney now. Four Jaegers. So the newsfeeds are saying. You wouldn’t know it.

They spend too much time in the hangar. Too much time looking at Lucky Seven (Stocky; olive drab panels and a closely shuttered blue-black visor. Not ‘pretty’ but sturdy: fierce, like her pilots) partly because they can’t make themselves walk the extra hundred metres to look at Nomad, partly to try and work out how Lucky with her blockier torso and Mighty Glacier fighting style managed to duck a swing that Venator didn’t.

The upshot is the techs all know their faces. (The twins know the techs better than their Bridge Op, and they hear _Norouzi_ ’s voice every day.)

They just don’t know if it’s actually them the techs see.

 

… …

_You’re ten and someone tells you only tomboys have short hair. You throw bark at him, and when your father comes to collect you from the school office, he’s still wearing his microcams. Your twin is picking gravel out of the grazed knee she got wading in for you. Historically, who starts most of your fights?)_

… …

 

The joke about Lucky goes that while there _is_ a third Aussie pair around, the Colliers see them so rarely Lucky might as well pilot herself. Except for morning muster, they don’t see much of Ranger Hercules Hansen. Plenty of his back; rarely his front. The joke runs that there are actually two half-people that make up Herc Hansen and putting them together might make the universe implode.

Scott is the opposite. They learn quickly that it’s when he’s _not_ in eyeshot that it’s time to start worrying. Even when ‘in eyeshot’ means through a TV screen.

The Weis… they steer clear of the Weis. There’s an edge to the triplets’ eyes even when they’re otherwise alone in the Rangers rec room, and it only gets worse when Scott wanders in. Horizon they avoid completely: her pilots are Scott’s age and the twins don’t think it’s a persecution complex to interpret Po’s regard of them as ‘bugs on a windshield’, though Shen seems… milder. Maybe it’s a side effect of the second Horizon unit going down to Reckoner with busted gyros. They chide themselves sharply for the reflexive thought – studying the fallen Rangers’ portraits in the Memorial Hall – that it should have been Bohai Baku that survived, because Tai Lo and Angie Chu would have been easier to get along with.ra

They’ve already missed the golden days of Rangers jostling shoulder to jaw. The pilots’ corridor feels emptier after the Kodiak dorms—emptier still because the Hansens (still here; closed doors means no one sees that fistbump) don’t have rooms this level. They’re down in family quarters—two bunkrooms, toilet, and a tiny shared space. (Like Kodiak.) Idly, the girls wonder if they have the same bare metal chairs and table that sticks to the forearm after three hours seated at it unmoving. (Like Kodiak.) Are the bedroom doors are as thin? And if, at three AM, they were to sit up and peer at the light beneath one, would they hear father and uncle?

… …

_You’re ten and there’s no sound scarier than your father sobbing in the living room at midnight_

… …

 

_I will never unsee that._

_You laid the stakes._ Scott’s grin is looser than usual. Less calibrated. Herc declined to join them so it’s just the Colliers, Scott and Sorvino in a booth at the back of an ‘English’ pub in guts of the midlevels, where rice wine battles with Tiger beer for place in the fridge beside the bar and the aircon rattles in an ill-cut hole in the front window. But no one cares they’re PPDC. (Almost no one. Three women by the bar have been sizing up the men. A quick whisper and renewed looks of appraisal say they’re hunting Rangers.)

 _I said,_ Tahnee corrects, _I’d wager you doing the Funky Chicken against Dana getting all four quarters into the glass. I didn’t say I wanted to see it._

Scott shrugs around his beer, dimple-like scar pulling in one cheek. (Windsurfing accident, he says; barfight, Herc says.) _Consider yaself blessed with the memory._ He makes eye contact with one of the women. Her hip props out and her chin drops a quarter inch. She knows who he is and what she wants. Scott excuses himself. He hears the song of his people _._ Tahnee mutters an inquiry to Dana if it’s _Mambo Number Five_ , and Dana snorts into her cider.

 _Is he always like that?_ she asks Sorvino, nodding after Hansen.

_Only on days that end in ‘Y’. But that’s Hansen, S. Buckets of confidence. Matchbox of luck._

Tahnee’s watching him put the moves on the Jaegerflies. _Hansen, S, huh?_

 _Hands-on, S._ Sorvino frowns at Dana and Tahnee covers a grin with her bottle. Leaves her twin to defend: _The girls on the comm-deck call him Hands-On._

 _Kinda like Hurricane Hansen,_ Tahnee muses.

_What, Little Bit?_

_Charlie, yeah._

Sorvino’s smile is worn at the edges. _Don’t want to get caught calling him that. It’s ‘Chuck’._

The snort is out before they can stop it. _What, like Up-chuck? Chuckles? Delicate stomach, has he?_

 _Not a clue._ _Just calls himself Chuck. But he’s insistent. Never seen a kid get so riled up over someone using the wrong name. Doesn’t stop some from doing, of course—it’s a guaranteed stirrer. But if you’re not trying to get a rise out of him, best avoid it._

Tahnee raises an eyebrow at Dana. Repeats what their tech team told them:Hurricane Hansen. Ranger Hands-On.

The women left out Herc. Or Tahnee can’t remember. She frowns at Dana: was it Hunkules Hansen?

 _Hope you don’t let any of them_ hear _you calling them that._ Sorvino sounds more amused than disapproving. He’s been around Captain-Father longer than they have: RAAFCOL. Darwin. He’s Italian-Australian olive to Captain-Father’s sunburnt tan. Same ink, same hair. (Used to be: same easy-going nature. Dog in the sun.) He doesn’t chide them. He’s heard worse, or five months babysitting on Kodiak desensitised him. (Five months, or the crack of the seal on a bottle of scotch and a radio staticking on the counter. _Late this morning in Jayapura—_ )

Tahnee trails her fingers over the scarring on her knuckles. It’s faded after nine months but still puckered. Pink.

Dana feels the touch like a ghost over her own hand. _Nah,_ she jokes to cover the tremor in her fingers. _But the jokes do write themselves. Fly it like a C-130?_

 _Fly who like what?_ The voice is rusty, familiar and disapproving: Captain-Father is back from the bathroom, standing behind them to listen. Sorvino studies the lunch menu on a cardboard box in the middle of the table, one hand cupped around his moustache.

The girls fix him with a hard-eyed stare. _No one, Sir._

_Good. Hate t’ think you weren’t showing the deserved respect to your fellow Rangers—or to the title._

They say _No_ and _Sir._ (But not _sorry._ Not _sorry_ , because they’re Rangers now and they haven’t been children since March 2016. They haven’t been _his_ children since March 2003.) The words taste like metal and iodine, and it must show on their faces. Even as he settles in to a conversation with Sorvino (new theory from a scientist in LA: kaiju to rise in size, Category- _III_ ) they still feel the weight of his stare. Like maybe they’re not taking this seriously. Like maybe, when he came back from Jayapura alone, he should have changed his mind.

Across the bar, the woman in red starts laughing, and Scott digs the photo of his nephew out of his wallet to show her and you could be forgiven for forgetting, for a minute, that it wasn’t _his_ son.

 

 

Chuckles is the only Hansen who’s really _around_ in more than a figurative sense—and he’s more a vague impression of a scowl and scuffed boots than an actual person. At best he’s dimples and a streak of green sprinting across the hangar, trying to get as close as possible to Lucky Seven without being shooed away. At worst he’s a storm in a bottle: black and roiling, turbulence under glass.

So no: they don’t call him Charlie.

 

 

It’s sixteen forty-three when Tahnee announces she’s solved their naming problem. Break time. Downtime. She’s absently trying to braid Dana’s two-inch hair. Dana’s tracing the lines of their Jaeger, cheek pressed to Tahnee’s thigh. She repeats it (slowly). They agreed not to try until they actually _saw_ her and now they have it’s like trying to name a firstborn child and describe a nightmare at the same time.

It’s taken weeks, heated discussions, head-slapping, several thumb wars and a lot of flat vetoing—but it’s perfect.

 

 

Several hundred candidates in their Academy cohort, six graduating Ranger pairs, and the twins are deciding the name of a six-billion-dollar mecha based on the outcome of a thumb-war campaign, Dana muses aloud as they bed down that night.

 _Small things are mighty,_ Tahnee murmurs. _Like her. And Mum. You want English Breakfast or peppermint?_

 

… …

_You’re five and both of your parents are in uniform bound for Base Tindal._

… …

 

The deck crew have a little ceremony to inaugurate her: champers and offensively loud music in her bay.

Dingo, the girls say. Small, crafty and bloody persistent. The opportunist.

The ‘Kuraĝo’ part is Esperanto. It’s courage, moxie, determination and grit all rolled up into one, and craning their necks back at her from the hangar floor the girls reckon they couldn’t have made her scrappier if they named her Tassie Devil. (But Kurago sounds cooler.)

Just this once, Captain-Father looks away as they join the deckhands in swigging champagne straight from the bottle. The hard work starts tomorrow. For tonight, they’re allowed to just be Rangers celebrating a fresh start.

 

 

They’re a little tipsy walking back to quarters and they _know_ it but it’s hard to miss the chesty bellow from the other end of the surplus corridor (even at that octave). One voice is lower—the boom of distant thunder in the Margaret River hills. The other is higher: lightning splitting trees. It can’t muddle the words: _Academy_ , _duty_ , _want_ , _they_ , thrown like handgrenades.

Lucky comes up. Then Venator. Chuck corrects his father to _Nomad_ – _they refurbished her, you know! Better than new_ – but Herc’s not having any of it and _do you know how many died in Kowloon are you ready for that kind of weight?_

_I sleep bad enough already. How much worse can it get?_

The twins walk back to their quarters quickly (for a given value of that). But they’re both thinking it: they don’t know the answer to that question. It changes every night.

 

 

Their father approves, when they announce her name at morning muster. Sorvino approves. Marshal Bae approves. Or at least, she doesn’t see the irony. Po studies her agenda; Shen shrugs. The triplets seem bemused, but it’s hardly the weirdest thing Australians in HK have done so they keep fiddling with their legal pads and in the twenty minutes since step-brief started it looks like they’ve hammered out a dozen lines of code. The guys at the Academy weren’t kidding: the Weis are sharp.

 

 

Another Sydney ghost, Sorvino calls Chuck when they mention him at lunch. Captain-Father only grunts at this assessment. The girls exchange looks over their trays and gaze from under lowered lashes at the lighter band of skin on their father’s finger. The two men are co-pilots. Same ink, same hair. Same metal-bone-synapsefluid and that perfect two-point drop fifty feet into the waters off Kodiak the day they tested in Baker Fox—

But only Sorvino knows the architecture inside Derek Collier’s skull now. And if, on some level, they wonder if maybe it’s black and yellow and blue, with waves crashing and the thud like a distant heartbeat of choppers swinging around too late. They don’t ask.

He catches them staring. They look away and make a show of swallowing their Metharocin pills with healthy swigs of fruit juice.

 _Scraps of bone and skin held together by loss and sheer bloody-mindedness_ , Sorvino is saying. _One of a thousand like him in the Corps._ He’s talking about the kid. Probably. _Pray you never end up like that, chickadees._

 

… …

_You’re five, and your father is pointing out the stars from hill behind the house. He thinks you don’t notice him thumbing your hair as you search for Orion._

… …

 

General Krieger flies out from Geneva to oversee the first test. His presence should be enough to pour a bucket of icewater into their suits with them except—

Except they’re hip-deep in the Drift and she-Tahnee-Dana-Kurago is all red alloys and brown dam water splashing like diamonds in the sun burning them to a sliver of starlight through the clouds is enough for them to find the three-star chain of Orion ( _the Hunter)_ and his belt—

Norouzi’s dry, accented English informs them their neurotransmitters are spiking and to calm their tits. They’re pretty sure the University of Tehran didn’t teach her that one.

( _No, we shan’t_ , Tahnee mumbles. It’s not like they’re hearing Marshal Pentecost _sotto voce_ counting to seven at the back of their head.)

They walk. They know she can do more than that and they’re chafing at the bit, but this is Krieger and Marshal Bae’s party and they’ve made it clear the twins can be uninvited. No nepotism on this base. ‘A number of Rangers experienced battlefield fatality in unbreached Jaeger cranial Conn-Pods due to the impact of falling as their damaged Jaegers lost balance’ and Christ wasn’t that a kick in the guts seeing that in their inbox with Ortega’s apologetic _thought you ought to know, this report is happening_. (It doesn’t help to know Lo and Chu’s names are in there too.)

They walk.

She’s more technical than some rigs, they were warned in Anchorage: greater precision needed in the weight distribution ratios, less margin for error. She’ll get up faster and move around more fluidly but if they’re not careful she’ll also _go down_ more easily and they probably don’t want to be testing how quick she can get back to her feet with a kaiju bearing down on them.

The looks the techs exchange are eloquent. Instead they said that Tahnee has the maths and Dana’s got the mechanics. She’s their girl. She’ll look after them. From the back of the room, they picked out _Rako_ from the techs’ muttered Chinese.

Smaller and lighter, said the engineers as they spun up her digital model on Kodiak. Faster servos, new iteration gyros. Less armour—but more mobility. No escape pods. ( _Just don’t get hit yeah_ , hardi-fucking-ha, Hansen, you’re two drinks in and you’re already an arsehole.) She was built around their fighting style, the techs told them. Aside from standing knowledge of _Escrima_ and _Muay Thai_ , they’re quicker off the mark than anyone shy of Duc and Kaori Jessop. _That,_ the techs said,is what was seized on by the engineers: how to reduce torque, stress and weight if only they could get greater speed, greater mobility to negate the _need_ for the extra weight in armour. (And the reduce the hefty price-tag. The deliverance of humanity does _not_ come cheap.)

She’s got great gaping holes in her defences. She’s not meant to take on more than a Cat-II on her own—the hypothetical Cat-III only with back-up. Heck, she _is_ the back-up. But if she works…

She’s better balanced, better reinforced, better co-ordinated than anyone else out there. She doesn’t pull hair, but Tahnee is sure that if they _find_ a kaiju with hair she’ll give it a red-hot go.

Bae gives them the go-ahead to let her off the chain.

 

… …

 _You are Dingo and Kurago, and you can_ run.

… …

 

Tahnee’s gauntlet pinches. The new ones were a rush job so it didn’t look like Australia was falling behind in _all_ their tech – refitting a Mark-I instead of upgrading, getting a Mark-II instead of a III – but it shows. They have finer circuitry, greater dexterity once clipped into the hand controls, and thicker padding in high-wear areas. But the shape is wrong. The web of thumb and forefinger _burns_.

Come the end of the test, the sweat standing on their foreheads is only partially from the exertion of moving the motion rig. (Lighter than a Mark-I but still equivalent to shifting a fullbody weight-harness through chest-high water. The image drifts through their minds: all the Academy washouts who laughed at those drills. A dozen different _areyoufuckingkiddingmes_ blended up with chlorine; sweatsalt; a USN General saying _if you really want to change the world start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud_ ; Tahnee saying _Raaanger, say it with me Na-na_ ; a throbbing in their hand, and vibrations in their throats of the Paratroopers’ _Blood On The Risers_ to get their squad through twenty laps.)

The pain is a dull throb for the flight back to the ‘dome. Spines of a sharper one as they walk the Jaeger back into resting position in her rack.

Tahnee grimaces as the suit techs unclip her vambrace in the Drivesuit Room. The techs exchange shifty looks as Dana’s arm locks up in tandem. She stares at them until they keep going. Both pilots suck in a breath as Tahnee’s inner glove peels away. Purple the size of a twenty-cent piece wraps the muscle. _Blood On The Risers_ will not get them through this; they hum the melody of another old tune instead, something about the rain. At least they think they do. They mouth the words, bobbing their heads to the music they hear, but the techs are watching them like maybe they’re possessed and when they think about it, there’s no vibration in their throats.

 

 

Captain-Father is waiting outside to escort them to Medical for the standard After Action check-up, Sorvino at his side. (It’s not necessary, but it’s a premise to be here.) His smile drops when he catches the blister in their salute. The corners of his eyes pinch in. Sorvino’s slapping them on the back, but from Captain-Father there’s only a thousand-yard stare. He leaves them in Doc Marlow’s care in Medical and doesn’t stay to observe.

 

 

They’re discussing stresses recorded by monitoring diodes in their girl’s joints during the test with several techs over Shepherd’s pie and Gatorade when Sorvino shows up to dinner. His side is conspicuously empty.

 _Bad day,_ he says and tucks into his pie.

 

 

They dream of their mother that night. Fatigue bites deep into their bones and weighs them down. They are girls, sinking to the bottom of the dam. They are a Jaeger ( _black/yellow/black_ ), walking the bottom of the sea.

In the depths, among the flickers of sediment and snow and wedding rings clanking on dog tags, they find her:

Smells of grease, hot metal and lavender; fingers in their hair; the sweetness of golden syrup in ANZAC biscuits; and a voice on the radio saying _late this afternoon in Jayapura—_

 

 

In three weeks they learn a lot:

Hong Kong is cooler than they remember. The floors get cold enough to make bare feet ache, but socks pick up carbon and dirt like a mother.

Deck-techs are happy to demonstrate, correct and instruct. (But they also have sharp implements and finite patience for non-Engineering-Qualified Rangers.)

LOCCENT has the best coffee. The Troopers have the best PT course.

Scott Hansen will put you flat on your back in the Kwoon if you insinuate boxing is inferior to Muay Thai. (You’ll only get the drop on him once, then your jaw will ache for days.) He’s also got shit taste in the beer and a terrible track-record with female Staffers, and if he can be manipulated into laying the right wager he can be parted from anything.

Bonus: should he walk himself blindly into these wagers, his brother will not help him. _Cf_. Captain-Father, Sorvino.

Furthermore: Scott does not like grease. The one place he’s guaranteed not to be found is the hangar deck.

Furthermore: He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and his best rendition of _Don’t Stop Believing_ could make a BuenaKai cultist give up on God. (Whatever ‘god’ they follow.)

His brother is an altogether different animal. Among other things, Hansen Senior is a goddamn sneaky Poker player and can bury six pints as easily as his brother or Sorvino. He’s crap with his kid, and fantastic with the J-techs.

Also: Chuckles has an impaired sense of self-preservation—especially when it comes to cargo loaders, Jaeger feet, and chemical spills. (The day they learn this is also the day they learn that the kid knows more filthy words than anyone under fourteen has a right to, and resolve to keep to their own bay lest they give in to the temptation to see if any of those words shake loose of his vocabulary with a hard enough smack around the ear.)

In addition to this: the ordnance and programming people do not get along. Most Support pilots are shameless flirts. There’s one guy in F&B who can get anything. And if there’s one thing to remember about the girls’ own tech crew, it’s that they’re filthy, filthy cheats.

It’s the last that makes them wonder why only Hansen Junior hangs out socially with Lucky Seven’s crew when they’re Hands-On’s kind of people. And when they ask, they can’t stop themselves from frowning when he calls deck-techs _a bunch of knuckle-dragging blackhanders_.

 

 

It’s zero-nine-hundred and they’re sitting in a classified briefing with Marshal Bae, General Krieger and all other command crews, knocking back coffee like shots trying to be 100% awake for this.

Marshal Bae eyes the pair of them like she knows yesterday ended in a bar, but she won’t take them to task in front of the General. Sorvino looks placidly amused. Captain-Father looks displeased; but the girls don’t know if that’s them or the hamstring he tweaked during morning run.

Beyond him, the Weis are playing with their phones. (The narrow-jawed one is scratching on a legal pad.) Scott looks bored out of his skull and hungover as a miner on Day One off-rota. Herc is skimming the briefing dossier. (Pointedly not looking at his brother; they have matched bruising around jaw and eye.) Herc pushes the folder away when Krieger starts to speak, and the triplets make their phones disappear. The girls named Kurago just in time for him to fly in and brief them on what exactly the brass are scheming. The Colliers were assigned to Hong Kong because Hong Kong is where Kelly Nomad is. ( _Venator_ , hisses a voice in the back of the twins minds. _Late this morning in Jayapura—_ )

Kurago is here to be Nomad’s backup dancer. Secretary General Krieger does not appreciate Tahnee putting it that way (but he doesn’t correct her). Dana catches a half-hearted longing from Tahnee for the Academy Marshal: Pentecost was always professional but at least he had more humour than this half-dead haddock. She hides a snigger in a cough and sits up straighter although they’ve been told to relax. The strategy Krieger’s explaining is different to the standard 2- and 3- Jaeger Strike Groups developing elsewhere. She’s curious. (And a little hungover herself.)

Krieger’s pleased the Colliers have named her (claimed her) but now there’s work to do. He’s expecting no less than stellar performance out of another generation of Colliers. (March last year notwithstanding. Cat-II Kaiju. Who saw that coming?) Herc shifts uncomfortably in his chair. No telling if it’s the mention of Rako or the bruising from the fight. No pressure.

With Kurago fresh off the racks, Horizon will tackle anything local and the Hansens will do the international runs whilst Nomad and Kurago work out the kinks in the brass’ latest brainchild:

It’s dubbed the Crossfire Tactic. One large heavy engager and one smaller lighter harrier. So naturally Kurago has to be part Jaeger, part cheetah and part psychic.

Dana thinks this is a little unfair. Tahnee thinks it’s a little bit batshit to be making Jaegers _smaller_ while the kaiju are getting _bigger_. That said, Kuraĝo’s so goddamn pretty it might actually work. Murphy’s Laws of the Armed Forces: if it’s stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.

They’ll leave the psychic part to K-Watch just in case. As Pentecost reminded them: this is War. You’re only as good as the guy beside you. All for one, one for all. Everybody fights, nobody quits. All that _Full Metal Jacket_ , _Starship Trooper_ shit.

Who are they kidding? They _love_ that _Full Metal Jacket, Starship Trooper_ shit. Dana had to fight Tahnee out of making part of Kuraĝo’s callsign ‘Ripley’. They fought about it the way they fight about who got bottom bunk (Tahnee), who gets first shower (Dana), and who gets to speak first when they make PR trips (best of seven coin flips): fiercely, affectionately and, to the supreme discomfort of their security detail, in complete silence. This is the way they look at each other as Krieger breaks out the maps and animated tactical projection videos.

_You following all this, ‘Kurago’?_

_Yes, Sir._ One eye on the fold of skin over the back of his collar. One eye on the maps. Patrol paths picked out around in the Coral Sea and Pacific Islands—yellow for Nomad, green for Lucky, red for Kurago. For all that ‘forerunner of defence technology’ razzledazzle, she’ll never be lead pony.

Sydney’s area will be bigger than other Shatterdomes’, Krieger is saying. Guam is already gone. It would look very good, he says, if they could prevent any other islands from being obliterated incidentally.

 

 

Krieger sends Kurago out with Nomad to see how she paces. Nomad steps out of Scramble Alley ahead of them. ( _Age before beauty_ — _I swear to God, you are not too old for me to tan your hides.)_ They’re laughing until the white haze of the Drift settles and Nomad’s outline comes into focus halfway through the harbour: black and yellow with her undeployed Stingers projecting up from her elbows like bracers.

For a dark second they forget the patch-over. She’s Venator.

Venator lifting off the tarmac, too slow to duck that haymaker, falling two hundred feet all screeching metal and a half-crushed Pod—

She swings around to ‘look’ at Kurago. Prominent on her chest is Nomad’s device, not Venator’s. The PPDC’s plump little bird, wings outstretched like an eagle’s (RAAF) and a star at her throat. Plain shield in the Corps style. No sign of Venator’s Thylacine. The illusion evaporates. They wade through the water into position.

They know Captain-Father can’t see them through Kurago’s visor—but they imagine they can see him. If they dig into the Drift, they can see the grin he’s probably wearing. The one from Graduation Day. Too white. Too stretched. Cracking at the edges like sunburnt leather. Love so sharp and strong within him it’s like an alien entity. They imagine it convulses in time with their breaths—theirs, his, Sorvino’s—all of them synced to a single heartbeat.

In the thrum of her reactor, the twins swear they can hear Kurago echoing it back to them. And in the crackle of the comms, Nomad as well.

 

_… …_

_You’re eighteen and when you listen to your mother laughing as she towels sweat off her face, you can’t decide if you agree with your father when he points out_ Fi, thylacine went extinct _—or with her when she comes back:_ **we’re** going extinct, hon; you wanna bet going bigger and badder for a Round Two wouldn’t’ve brought ‘em back from the brink _?_ _because_ _she looks so fierce and battle-ready even after five hours on the mat that you’d follow her into the mouth of the Breach and you honestly believe she could resurrect a_ species _by willpower._

… …

 

They front up on deck to help with clean-up with their legs still shaking. There’s a 100% chance the crew will have to do this again, soon, with alkaline solutes and KB neutraliser, and the twins will never get near her when she’s biohazardous. But they need to know what they’re asking their crew to do. And the hangover goes faster with work.

The deck techs are pleased to instruct them on exactly how Hong Kong’s harbour is fundamentally filthier than most other places. Read: their glee at getting their pilots filthy is boundless. The twins can’t decide if it’s lack of respect that means they don’t bother to hide the laughter, or lack of formality. Maybe both.

The techs are emphatic in how to best angle the pressure cleaner to limit splashback. ( _You’re doing it wrong.)_ The best ratio of chems to break up the diesel scum. ( _Spit. Don’t look at me like that, Commander, it all gets washed out with the rest of the crap. Pull down the facemask and spit.)_ All the nooks and crannies. Dana looks slantways at the first tech to start cussing; that doesn’t last. Tahnee bails. Another hour and Dana’s half-ready to agree with the blackhanders cussing out Kurago’s rotators. They’re not even doing this in the heavy rubber BH suits. The deck is awash with bits of polystyrene, green-grey foam and oily rainbows. The chems splash back anyway, and they taste sour even through the cloth facemask.

 

_… …_

_How many cuts and scars do you have by the end of third Trimester? How many were there before you started? Your twin counts them one night, trailing her fingers over an old one on your back, and tells you,_ three new. But they’re not as bad as the old ones.

… …

 

They’re poring over the joint stress readings from the test in Kurago’s office when a tech approaches them with a finished design of her decal.

They move ceremonially to a gantry opposite her to watch it be painted on by deck-techs in suspension harness. She’s clean and dry now—so freshly buffed those pain-in-the-ass triple joints glint. There’s a twinge of pride they helped get her that way and a lightness in their chests that makes them think maybe they should be in safety harnesses despite the guardrail. The decal is black on red. Silhouetted dogface inside the Corps’ five point shield. The lightness stretches their ribs to bursting. Electricity fizzes in their fingers like feedback. Tahnee nudges Dana with the celebratory ginger beer. Her attention is not on that.

The Specialist notices them watching and does a forward roll in his harness, just to show off. Dana vaguely remembers something about Flipside Circus. The crew call him Spider. Tahnee calls him a show pony and drains the beer because Dana didn’t take it.

 

 

Dana pretends not to notice when he shows up later in a Pons sim session. Dana pretends not to notice when the Specialist shows up in the Drift later. Tahnee’s red up to the ears as it is and she can’t bring herself to strip off the magic sparking around the memory in the Drift like unearthed current. It isn’t like she has any of her own.

The memory tastes like ginger and salt and heat up her spine that has nothing to do with synaptic fluid relay, and when Tahnee pulls her close after the patrol, resting her forehead against Dana’s and says, _you should try it, Na-na; it won’t kill you_.

 

… …

 _You are born twelve minutes apart. It’s not the longest you’ve ever been separated—but it’s the one you fought hardest against_.)

… …

 

‘Keeping it in the family’, the press call it when they finally make their first promotional appearance. This is the glamour part of being a pilot and while neither of them are here for that, they can’t help but preen a little. They look smoking hot in their drivesuits and they know it, and as of the five-page spreads in _GQ_ and _Women’s Weekly_ earlier this week, now so does the rest of Australia. (People reading _GQ_ know they look pretty good out of them, too.)

The media’s calling them Bushie Battlers from the West. Daughters of the Southern Cross. Not a bad step up for a pair of Airforce brats from the Margaret River.

_Are you proud to be serving your country like this?_

_What’s it like serving alongside your father?_

_Do you share quarters?_

_What would you say to all the girls who want to be Rangers, knowing how hard the training is now for yourselves?_

They’re so busy narrowing their eyes at the speaker of the last they’re blindsided by the next:

_What do you think your mother would say about you being Rangers?_

They turn their necks as one to stare.

It’s a lean bearded man in the front row who asked, notebook lazily slung across his lap. _Considering what happened off Jayapura last year,_ he adds. The insignia of the ident badge hanging off his belt is one of the more ambiguous publications. Not exactly anti-Corps, but edging the line. _One of the Programme’s first major blows since Captain Casey, wasn’t it? Discounting the discovery of radiation poisoning in Rangers Sevier, Mazlin, Lightcap and d’Ofrino, of course._

There’s a bad taste in Dana’s mouth like cheap scotch. Her knuckles ache. Tahnee’s knee bumps hers under the table and she’s already taken the mic to explain how their mother’s life was the RAAF (was Venator) and she’d have been proud enough to burst knowing her girls were out there on the front line carrying on the work she died for.

It’s a lie. But it’s a popular one, and nobody needs to know that famous Kwoon fight that ended up on YouTube and cemented Derek and Fiona Collier as co-pilots was started by the girls’ decision for Kodiak instead of East Sale.

 

… …

_You’re five and your mother sits you down at the kitchen table to explain the concept of deployment. She scrubbed her hands clean before coming home but her skin smells like Solver and the undersides of her fingernails are still black._

… …

 

They get used to long runs—hours flying down the perimeter, waving to Borneo and Indonesia as Kurago and Nomad are ferried past. They play too many games of I-Spy with their lead Hawk. Spend too much time in the harness parrying Star Wars trivia with Sawtooth and Bo. (They don’t have faces for the names.) Win too many lyrical challenges against LOCCENT. (Norouzi prefers instrumental tunes; she isn’t as gratified as they expect to share this preference with half the K-Sci department, nor does she appreciate the pilots’ offers to ‘fix’ her.) Lose too many when the topic’s celebrities or sports.

The Hawk contingent calls these ‘milk runs’; probie Rangers wearing out their baby teeth. That cuts closer to the quick the day they wade past Jayapura and realise the first day Marshal Bae sent them out solo is the first time they’ve had this sector of Papua on their patrol map.

Tahnee flicks Dana a sharp look from the map on the HUD. Dana can hear it in her: both of them torn between ‘manipulative’ and ‘magnificent’ as adjectives for _that bitch_ but Norouzi’s listening, probably with Bae right behind her, and anything they say will only draw reprimand for missing this detail during step-brief.

They admire and despise her. The Drift colours orange, then purple, and finally settles back to white. They wonder if she learnt this from Pentecost.

Kurago runs silently for the remaining four hours of patrol except to hail fishing boats and greet the milkmen when the cables descend.

 

… …

_You’re seventeen and the Jaeger Academy Pilot Program has a failure rate of 86% in Phase One. You wonder if you want it enough to stick out the SEAL Instructors, and shave off half your hair._

… …

 

Scott is chased out of the Brazilian ambassador’s house in Happy Valley with a nine iron.

Someone records it on their phone. Someone puts it up on three different websites (gossip rag, local news, Hansens fanclub) and it’s viral in an hour.

When Scott slinks in to muster, his face is carbon-copied off the dog that ate the Christmas chicken then puked it up under the tree: he didn’t get to keep it, and he knows he should feel guilty, but he still got to do it. Everyone is confined to base for a fortnight.

 

 

Herc flies out to Kodiak alone. He stays a week, and doesn’t say what for when he comes back. Maybe new Jaeger tech. Maybe another pair for probation. Who are _Dingo Kurago’s_ mentors? They barely say a word to their father, although they eat together most days, and Scott’s a trainwreck for anybody’s role model.

Herc comes back with looser shoulders and an unlocked jaw. He smiles. Brings back a book of metallurgy for Chuck. It’s in Japanese. The girls don’t know if that’s meant to be a joke, a challenge, or an insult, but the way Chuck stares at it over the Rec Room table—

Herc smiles when asked about Kodiak, and tells Chuck to eat his noodles. (He doesn’t.)

 

 

Kurago’s crew christen her bay The Kennel. Kind of puts a new spin on ‘being in the doghouse’ and there’s a series of scuffles until dopier staff learn that it’s _still_ not okay to call Kurago’s female crew ‘bitches’. Tahnee limps. Dana steals icepacks from Medical. Two male techs are dismissed and a third is detained in the tanks overnight.

Marshal Bae frowns at the twins over her desk because one of the dismissed men was mysteriously kneecapped and no one saw it happen. Just off camera. In a main corridor. In the middle of the day.

If she thinks this is payback for Jayapura, she gives them the benefit of the doubt.

 _Must’ve tripped,_ says Dana.

 _Dangerous, walking in boots that don’t fit,_ adds Tahnee.

 

 

 _You know, you look like your mother when you pretend you’re not smug like that,_ Captain-Father tells them as they step down from the Marshal’s office. _It’s not your best look._

They tug their coveralls straighter and tilt their chins. It’s not innocent. Maybe defiant.

 

… …

_You’re five and both of your parents are in uniform bound for Base Tindal._

… …

 

Scott – Chuck at his heels and a golf driver on his shoulder – grins when they pass him incognito (windbreakers over their coveralls and patrol caps pulled low). _You’ll learn_.

Y _eah,_ they think. _But what?_

 

 

Marshal Bae banned them from the Staging Area and LOCCENT for a week. They take the time to inspect the air support squadron. It’s an excuse to get a better eyeful of the fleet than they’ve had from two thousand feet, and to thank the milkmen.

Trailing around the end of a Pelican, they find themselves eye-to-eye with an old school pin-up in too-tight fatigues and a muscle shirt lacquered onto the side hatch of a Hawk. It’s gratifying to note she’s built like a Ranger—somewhere between gymnast and rower, with biceps more cut than theirs and a brace of piercings up one ear. Her hair is unnaturally red. They wonder if she’s meant to be Tamsin Sevier.

Beyond her, a man and woman were leaning against the cabin to chat. There are thin blue and black bands on the shoulders of her bag; thicker on his. They straightened up the moment they sighted Ranger tabs, all snap-to and _is there something we can do for you, Commanders?_ The voices are familiar.

Raising eyebrows at each other, the twins pull their caps off to get a better look at their lead Hawk pilots. The calligraphy under the pin-up says Sawtooth and Bo. Above that—

Dana nudges Tahnee and both of them are grinning when they ask whose idea it was to call the lady ‘Suzy Lee’?

 _Mine,_ says Beauregard. His teeth look very white against his dark skin. _It was mine. And if you like, ma’am, I can give you a better look than you get hanging a hundred feet below her._

 

 

The Breach alarm goes off at zero-six twenty.

There are no klaxons. No alarms. There’s a very sedate PA message requesting all Rangers report to LOCCENT and a brief alert on news and TV feeds advising that movement has been detected, but that’s it. (How long has it been since oceanographers located the Breach? How much easier did those extra hours’ notice help the Corps breathe?)

Tahnee is with suit techs trying to iron out the pinching in her glove; the only reason she hears is the public Kaiju Alert app on her tablet.

Dana’s on deck with the duty crew. She’s hip to shoulder in lubricant and degreaser on a catwalk off Kurago’s left shin ‘observing’ the differences in configuration of relay nodes, servos and muscle strands between Kurago’s layout and the prototypical one of Tacit Ronin. Tahnee’s shout from the hangar floor doesn’t penetrate the ear muffs but it hits her mentally and rocks her sideways like a seismic event.

It’s only zero-six twenty. It hasn’t been a full three months since the last breach. The deck-techs are on notice the same way the suit techs are: putting the hard yards in now so Kurago’ll be smooth riding all the way to her _Pilot_ editorial. But:

_Kaiju!_

It takes an honest second to switch gears from _copper-wiring-triple-insulation-to-reduce-synapse-signal-decay-in-transit_ to _kaiju-attacking-get-to-the-frakking-Jaeger_. Once off the catwalk onto a gantry proper, she shouts down. Misheard. Must have. A tech chewing on a smile hands her his radio. (Hightower: Brisbane boy, LO-tech wife, four-year-old son.) Someone on the ground does the same for Tahnee. (Corporal Bligh: Norfolk Islander, short temper. They don’t call him Bounty. They don’t.) There’s distortion in the signal. Static in the speech. Doesn’t matter:

Two hours ago oceanographic sensors in Sector 13H picked up movement. Eastbound. Now it’s confirmed: Scarada, tracking directly east at the coast of Mexico. No visual contact, but water displacement is two point one megatonnes. Category-III.

The techs split neatly between cursing and sharp intakes of breath. Hightower catches his radio on the full. Down on deck, Bounty is left foundering in Tahnee’s wake. Dana’s pulling the sleeves of her coveralls over the mess of her t-shirt as she goes, fighting the zip. The scenario keeps going in the twins’ heads, images more than words: blue water, blue acid, yellow metal and smoke rising from a half-crushed Conn-Pod. They bolt for the doors, boots landing in time.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Tasmania Venator: Beacham has said the novel's 'Tango Tasmania' is not called that, as components of Jaeger names do not repeat.  
> Listen on 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/rorykurago/kurago-2017


	2. 2017: Sydney

### 2017: Sydney

 

Scarada narrowly bypasses the Isla de Guadalupe. A chopper contingent intercepts him. Lures him south. _How long until the first responders arrive?_

There is a betting pool going on deck. They aren’t surprised to hear this from Scott when he ambles in. He senses illicit activity like a dog scenting thunderstorms. (Or maybe it’s the desperation. He has a habit of picking on the weak or unguarded.)

Diablo Intercept or Romeo Blue?

Tahnee’s disgust at the notion of profiting off deaths across the Pacific is mute but eloquently stated in the twist of her mouth. Scott ignores it if he sees it. He’s toting a smirk that says if Romeo touches down first he’s buying for the next week. (Once lockdown lifts.) They lean away when he wanders back to him.

Tahnee had a Hawk flight manual open on her tablet to read while the techs messed with her glove; she hasn’t looked at it since they jogged into LOCCENT but it’s still open on the screen hanging slack in her hand. Hasn’t turned it off.

Last time the Colliers were in ‘Houston’, the Hughies ( _LO-techs_ , J-Tech Commander Intooi corrected sourly) were knocking back tea, joking around like a high school IT class. ( _Rangers_ , the techs muttered. _Rangers?_ Those _are Rangers?_ The Colliers didn’t mention _squints_ , _breakers,_ _HAL_ , _Smith_ , _cables_ , or _Arnotts._ It seemed like retaliation; favouritism for the deck.) No complete visual on Scarada yet but telemetry suggests he’s built along the same lines as Reckoner, and they can’t blame the techs for not looking away. The weird mash-up of centipede and narwhale is nauseous. And he nearly took a spotter bird out of the sky just by porpoising on cue.

Now the techs are barely aware of around them bodies in coveralls instead of camis and cable-knits. The twins stand at the back—them, Shen and a Scott still picked bits of sleep out of his eyes: Rangers splitting focus between realtime Hawk footage and the LO-techs’ brace of displays. No TV cams yet: Protocol 16, emergency airspace restrictions. There’ll be no keeping them out of the air over the engagement but there’s breathing room for the approach. It might be all the slack they get.

Category-III. Predication models knocked clear out of geometric into parabolic. The potential in that is atomic. The breath they took on the gantry – in Vancouver – feels like it’s been punched out of them with the impact of a two-hundred-foot fall in the simulator. So they stand at the back, hoping no one can see their hands shake.

The clamour is different without the lens of the Drift – the Jaeger – to focus it into Important and Not. Tahnee is in her element; Dana feels her sorting through the input, teasing out relevance. It becomes a spindle of fine threads in her mind. A circuitry of crisis response: red, blue, green, black, gold, like a wiring array. That’s her inner sparky coming to the fore.

Dana re-imagines the circuitry as components of fine machinery—flywheels and injectors and feedback loops and belts. It’s soothing. It’s logic. She feels Tahnee’s smile as a pull in her own muscles, and fingers tangle with hers. Share the load. The trembling in their hands eases.

Herc stands near the front on the level with Po—slightly ahead of the Weis but behind Marshal Bae. Nomad came off patrol at four; her Ranger team is out for the count. The present Rangers are watching the data streams, the true-colour feeds. ( _True colour is deceptive,_ Captain-Father said once as they watched news footage of UAVs scouting Syria. _The way things look is not the way things are, you understand, Snowpea?)_ For instance Romeo Blue was grounded six days ago for difficulties with lateral rotation in her hips—but there’s still three screens tracking her progress en-route to engage.

 _Why are they still sending her out if they don’t know she’s 100%?_ Dana murmurs to Tahnee.

It’s Shen that answers, swivelling idly in an office chair beside them. His hair is unbrushed and a mug sits empty beside him, faint brown stains dried at the lip. _After Tokyo, do you really think the commanders would let anyone deploy alone against this?_ His accent is light, tone lighter—but there’s no yield in his eyes when he raises his eyebrows at Dana. A Chinese translation of _Live-Die-Repeat_ dangles between two of his fingers; the twins wouldn’t have picked him for a Sci-Fi light novel fan (but they wouldn’t have guessed the Beckets could swing dance either, much less with each other).

Scott’s eyes are on a Vietnamese Hughie bending over to compare a tablet with a seated co-worker’s, but he’s evidently listening. _After Sevier, can you blame ‘em?_

 

… …

_You are five and both of your parents are deploying. It is only six months._

… …

 

Sorvino staggers in followed by Captain-Father at eleven-thirty-three. At their heels is Chuck. It’s unclear if they brought him along for the ride or he brought himself, but he’s stressed like a horse in a thunderstorm. Tahnee clocks his respiration. Colour. Posture. This is five hours after he normally surfaces; the image of his hand locked in his hair, head to the side staring at the metallurgy book drifts through Dana’s head before she realises with a nudge from Tahnee that he’s even there.

His face, when she looks, is doubled like a kaleidoscope. (No more late-night sim sessions, say her raised eyebrows to her co-pilot.) Sweat is bright on his forehead. Even in the dim lighting of LOCCENT they can see his pupils are blown. At top speed, LOCCENT is six minutes and ten seconds from Hansen quarters (skipping the lifts). (Two fluorescent lights per ten feet, between the Hansens’ door and here. Persistent lighting of 140 watts.) Tahnee’s frown finds its twin in Dana’s.

Chuck’s hair sticks out at a hundred angles. Smooshed on one side. White crusts one corner of his mouth—dried drool incompletely scrubbed off. The smell of unwashed teenage boy follows him into the aircon-and-aftershave of LOCCENT like something half-remembered.

This is not normal deportment in a Hansen. Hangover Scott is sloppier; early-morning Herc is blearier.

His timing is impeccable though:

_Four kilometres out, Ma’am._

Chuck is gung-ho about Jaegers, about Rangers (he’ll be the best, _just wait, laugh it up, greasers_ ) but in the wildness of his eyes he betrays something of himself. He’s past them before the LO-techs have registered he’s there. Only when he’s past does Scott’s chin jerk down at the corner of their vision. _Oi—!_

Chuck halts his sprint just short of his father, seemingly pulled up by an invisible leash (or wall), but Scott’s shout caught Herc’s attention. He half-turns just as the woman reports,

_Three kilometres. Two minutes to Diablo entering drop zone._

Sorvino hands the girls a mug each in circumspect silence and buries his face in his own.

Herc’s face as he rounds on his son is expressive: the kaiju or the child? _Chuck—_

Scarada bats for another spotter. Hyper-extendable tail. How did no one notice Scarada has a hyper-extendable tail? He’s bloody _harpoon-fishing_ for choppers. Marshal Bae orders a direct line to the other Shatterdomes and Captain-Father is leaning in behind his tech with a face of iron. Herc wavers.

This is the moment a corner is turned. No one will realise for a very long time. He turns his attention back to the screens. His voice drops back to a distant rumble, far off as a storm in the Philippines. What is Chuck doing here?

Chuck’s breathing is levelling out at the same time his ears are flushing red. He wanted to see. To hear.

Chuck’s breathing is levelling out at the same time his ears are flushing red. He wanted to see. To hear. Category-III. He won’t say it. His head tilts towards a monitor blinking with the little data on Scarada available, and when the motion is mirrored in half-scale on Herc as the father glances back at the son, the twins can _see_ him switching gears—Ranger Hansen to Dad. It’s in the slackening around his eyes, the drop of his shoulders. They can see him returning from Mexico (from Victoria Harbour). For a moment they think he’ll relent. Chuck is not supposed to be here ( _Authorised personnel, ladies, so make sure you have your ID)_ but if he stands quietly near the back, no one will comment. This ought to be enough.

But Chuck is not quiet. Chuck does not know how to be unobtrusive—he has never learned. He is a hurricane. A synoptic weather system, he changes the air around him. Charges it. Herc makes a vague gesture to Scott and murmurs something they don’t catch, and whatever it is tenses Chuck up like he’s been electrified. He sparks. Herc reacts. (On cue. Automatic protocol kicking in. That thought feels like Tahnee’s.)

 _Entering drop-zone, Ma’am,_ says a Hughie.

Diablo detaches. Sound fades out. She’s freefalling, deploying. Two point five megatonnes of global engineering and pissed-off humanity dropped directly into Scarada’s face. ( _What do we say to the god of Death?_ It’s resonant at the back of their minds, American voices with a touch of French lilt: _Giant robots, motherfucker, let’s go._ ) TV feeds from Mexico, SBS, PPN hiss and spark into life on more screens on one wall. Herc half-turns to look at them. (Breaks the feedback loop.) They’re true-colour.

Deceptive, says the voice in their heads.

 _Finally_ , says Bae.

When at last Herc looks back, Chuck’s ears are red but his knuckles are white. Arms ramrod straight at his sides. (Hours on the back veranda practising their salutes for the day Mum and Dad would finally come home.) His shoulders are made of stone and his voice doesn’t shake. He’s staying.

Diablo leans in for the shunt as she engages. She’s black and green and gunmetal-grey and when her shoulder slams into Scarada’s side, blue spurts over her omega-and-sword decal. The cameras are too far away to pick up the hiss and smoke, but her pilots will already be burning. Electrical feedback: acid eating into their chests, compression in their shoulders. This is the one thing the simulators do not teach. Tahnee’s hand in Dana’s tightens like the pinch of her gauntlet during their field test.

Herc seems to sway. He’s dead straight – thirteen years in the service, posture like a plumbline – but he wavers. Tahnee’s hand is white-knuckled in Dana’s; they’re waiting. For Scarada or Hansen, they don’t know.

Diablo goes flying. Scarada caught her in the midsection with that horn and the toss of his monstrous neck threw her halfway across the bay. A crazy thought flits through their minds how appropriate it would have been if Mexico’s half-built lady Matador Fury had been out there—how bizarrely funny. How ironic for the _terrero_ to be gored. ( _Olé,_ Javi jokes, walking out of their first sim session.) They don’t smile.

It’s Category III, and August 2013. It’s March 2016 and the feeling of beating their fists against sandbags until their knuckles bled. It’s Sorvino finding them sitting at a tiny kitchen table with their forearms stuck to the metal, red seeping through poorly-applied gauze, and the death in Captain-Father’s eyes when he stepped off the plane from Davao straight into the twins’ dry-eyed _we’re still going to the Academy_. It’s the anger in the line of Herc’s arm as he points out of LOCCENT, and the angle of Chuck’s jaw as he tips his head back and says, _no._ It’s all of these things and the thump of their hearts as they stood on a gantry looking at Kurago—and they realise that at some point, _this_ has become the war they are fighting:

To keep all their shit together while the world falls apart.

Diablo is not winning. Romeo is still ten minutes out.

The Weis are peering back at the source of the shouting, and the twins are fixating on the screens to block it out. At the back of their minds, San Francisco burns. The hollowed-out shells of the XZ rebuild and unbuild themselves again like a timelapse on a loop. And beneath all that a yellow-and-black Jaeger lolls supine in the waves off Jayapura, her Conn-pod half caved-in.

Chuck moves closer to his own father like physical proximity will make him more persuasive. Talks louder. He does nothing by half-measures; throws in with every fight—but they’ve never seen him fight like this, and in the way his head twitches towards the screens on Scarada they think maybe they know why.

He’s brave, but he’s a kid. They are brave, but they’re Rangers. Bone where hands tangle at the girls’ hips.

Diablo grips several segmented legs skittering over her torso and snaps them with a thunderous crunch like a crab dinner.

Chuck’s hands flail in the air as he gesticulates at the screens, at his badge, at his uncle. Marshal Bae is listening. So are Shen, Po, the Weis— Herc is not.

Scarada rolls away and submerges. Diablo gets her feet back but in the headcams, her pilots’ faces are shaken. Their heartbeats pound and jump.

Herc is distracted and Chuck is a tactician. He presses his advantage and almost manages to extract a _go-ahead_ in defeat. Herc is distracted and Chuck insists, and Diablo’s leg is run through with the spiralling horn that separates muscle fibres like wool.

Herc rounds on Chuck and orders him out of LOCCENT. The comms explode with SITREPs from every level. Marshal Bae is already barking back at Herc and Scott to stand ready if Lima calls for more aid.

Chuck is drawing in a breath, face twisting, charging up, lightning in his eyes— and his father shuts him down. He doesn’t go without a fight. **_Why_** _can’t I stay?_

If Chuck makes it to Ranger, he will, they think, be something rare to behold.

 _Authorised personnel only, Chuck_. The Officer tone is a final fuck-you. He’s back in Victoria Harbour dragging his battered body up through a hatch to stand atop Lucky, peering down at a dead kaiju with his brother crawling up behind him. Ranger, not father. _You know that._

Diablo’s rolling away from Scarada in the surf, staining the water around her black-yellow-green with fluids draining from her wounds. Her pilots must be screaming.

 _Uncle Scott is staying!_ Chuck’s face is screwing up.

_Scott’s a Ranger. When you’re a Ranger you can do as you like. Until then: **quarters.** _

Chuck reels back but his father’s hands are already physically turning him by the shoulders, shunting him at the door. Chuck’s not quick enough: he’s caught in his father’s force and blown forward like a roof in a hurricane. The Weis are ignoring the scene again. The Hughies don’t even look around. _They‘re staying!_

Ice breaks down their spines like a Kodiak water challenge. Chuck isn’t pointing to the Weis. Beside the twins, Sorvino tenses like he’s on the mat, but he doesn’t move. Herc is frozen. His eyes skip, side to side, Dana to Tahnee, and back. His hands are tight on his son’s shoulders and a muscle jumps in his jaw. For a fraction of a second, the twins feel very young and very small. They half-expect him to order them out too just to make Chuck go along quietly; for the same interval of time Dana thinks that she _does_ see that thought in his eyes. But when it passes his gaze is heavy as a Ranger tab but there’s not a shred of defeat in it.

 _They –_ the word pulls through his teeth like a grenade pin – _are Rangers._

The smell of grease and lubricant on Dana’s clothes strikes her more strongly, and Tahnee is hyper-aware of the dull throb of the bruising in her hand.

Just like that the battle lines are drawn. Chuck jerks away like he’s been branded. He glares up into his father’s eyes, jaw pushed out. The blue is the same. The set of shoulders, head, hands—all are mirrored between them. Herc was tried against a dozen candidates, someone told the Colliers at the Academy, and he’s adaptable—but only _compatible_ with two.

His uncle murmurs to him as he passes – _up early,_ and _don’t draw attention,_ and _at the back next time_ – but Chuck’s not listening. Only the last note seems to go through, when Scott grins like a high school senior and says maybe next time Chuck won’t sit up until all hours on the Net, hey?

The glare cuts off like something short-circuited; his face flares red. His eyes skip back to the Colliers wide as if he’s been caught texting in class. He’s gone before his uncle can catch him. The look he shoots the twins in passing is vile—but it’s milder than the one he reserves for his father.

On the true-colour feed, Romeo Blue drops into the sea and Diablo props herself up enough on one elbow to aim a plasma caster over her own shoulder.

 

… …

 _You're five, and you leave scratches on your mother’s neck above her uniform collar when your grandmother peels you away_.

… …

 

They don’t know how, but Scott finds out Tahnee was almost ‘Anna Collier’ and the twins become _AC/DC_. This proclamation is accompanied by a sloppy cheek-kiss each and a flower, because of course it’s February fourteenth and the slew of ‘ _Category Three crush on thee, Ranger!_ ’ emails weren’t enough, and then he’s gone—swanning off after a K-Sci whitecoat ( _Thanh, gorgeous! Hold up!)_. They suspect he’s drunk. Or stimmed. (Again.) But it’s an improvement on _T2D2 / C-squared_ / _Mary-Kate and Ashley_.

And it’s Valentine’s Day.

It’s before dawn.

And Kurago has patrol.

None of these things encourage them to give a flying fuck. They swap flowers for colour preference and finish their tea. Dana gives hers to a girl behind the dishwashing station. Tahnee hands the other to Bo when they pass him at the door.

 

 

It’s dawn. They’re on patrol. And the last cup of tea is two hours and a thousand kilometres behind them.

They could be bitching about being deployed on a ‘varied terrain readiness’ exercise away from all the sap and covert flower exchanges and cardboard hearts, but there’s something profound in being fused to a nuclear heart instead—warheart for a war machine and her souls. In the left cradle, the swing of Tahnee’s arm is perfectly in time with Dana’s. In the right cradle: a slight pinch in Dana’s hand from Tahnee’s. Feedback of the sea breaking against their will are tingling through the circuitry suits. The sun is rising up to meet them.

Their world is reduced to the sun bursting red and gold into the Pod, the dunes aflame, and someone a thousand kilometres behind them piping throaty love songs through the radio.

There isn’t space in that fierce joy for knowing they’re a featherweight, relying on speed and skill to topple giants.

 

… …

_You are Dingo Kurago, and you have never had another name._

… …

 

They’re pool-bound when they overhear voices down a side corridor. The voices aren’t unmistakable but the tones are familiar enough not to matter:

Herc, furious but voice pitched low. Scott, callow and obstreperous.

The Hansens are on call tonight. The Colliers know they are on call because the Kelly Nomad is not. Nomad is not, so Kurago is not, and Tahnee volunteered to Herc to help Little Hansen with the algebra prep work for the Advanced Learning Programme that’s throwing him for a loop. (Scott not shutting up for _days_ when the acceptance letter came through. _Chuck_ not shutting up for days when the acceptance letter came through. Herc pretending like he’s calm as if to balance out Scott but _running_ with it any time someone else brought it up.) That was at lunch, and Herc looked genuinely happier than they’d seen him in a week.

Down the corridor the voices drop too low to understand but sharp syllables and bitten-off sounds still carry. There’s a voice at the back of the twins’ heads that sounds like their father telling them not to lurk. (There’s a voice like their mother telling them to only lurk if they can learn something and they won’t get caught.) They pass the end of the corridor just as Herc shoves Scott away from him by the collar.

— _is a goddamn disgrace._

The flush of heat up the back of the twins’ necks is sympathetic, not guilty, but it prickles anyway.

Scott’s limbs are too loose as he sways away. Heavy somehow. Movements like taffy, or epoxy without enough catalyst. The last of Hansen’s words follow them dimly down the corridor: _Go see Doc Yuen. Tell him you’ve got a headache and get a stim. And for God’s sake, sober the fuck up. House-arrest’s only just been lifted. Are you_ trying _to get yaself booted from the Corps?_

 

 

Chuck’s in a mood when the girls knock on the Hansens’ door after dinner. There’s no shouting but the tension that spills out when Herc opens the door is heavy enough to drown in. Something rattles behind him (metal on concrete) and anger flashes in Herc’s eyes before he muffles it, but the smile he offers is consummately polite. Apologies, he says, pulling the door shut behind him, but his kid’s in no condition to be civil to anyone.

 

 

Herc goes to ground for the night (wherever he goes) but Scott’s distemper is plain. He skulks around in the Pilots Rec Room flicking bad-naturedly through channels on the holoscreen. Grunts in displeasure. The Weis watch him with slitted eyes, their shoulders rigid in the same alignment. Their fingers hover unmoving over keyboard and tablet. They’re—waiting, the twins realise. For a catalyst or an invitation, they don’t know, but when Scott finally throws the remote down on the couch in disgust and stalks out the three hold position for a second longer and then exhale in unison. They notice the twins watching. The one with a scar cutting into his hairline raises his eyebrows. Jin. The twins track their eyes deliberately to the door and then back to him and shrug. No: they don’t know either. Jin returns to typing. The women exchange a look over the oceanographic charts of the Pacific Islands spread out on the table between them and silently go on with tracing currents. They don’t know. Not strictly true.

But Captain-Father’s words in the pub are powerfully resonant at the back of their minds: Proper respect. Fellow Rangers.

 

… …

_You’re nineteen, and you are a Ranger. This is not your business._

… …

 

On March fourteenth Captain-Father collects them from their quarters in his dress blues. The twins shadow him and Sorvino to the Memorial Hall in silence. The Hall is larger here than the one on Kodiak—less cluttered, better lit, with alcoves for each framed portrait. But the atmosphere remains: dim, reverential half-surreal. Dana’s shoulder bumps Tahnee’s as they walk.

At the far end is their destination. There will be a small service here later, and a public one this evening. Positive PR if the twins put a face to the Corps’ loss. But Dana caught Tahnee’s eye in that briefing and held it, and they are agreed: no cameras. No press.

Beside the service portraits of Captain Casey and the other pilots who succumbed to wounds or radiation is their mother’s. She looks serene in her blues. It’s jarring: Fiona Collier was many things, but ‘serene’ was rarely one of them. Tahnee has her Herculean energy reserves and Dana has her temper, and both of them can strip down and reassemble a rifle or an engine block almost as quickly as the boys in Metalshop (faster, for the rifle), but neither of them ever has the languid, almost placid look of being exactly where they belong that their mother wears in her official Academy portrait.

On some level it’s comforting. They know she must have died screaming but they can imagine this is what she looked like in the moment of acceptance.

 

They expect he’ll dismiss them afterwards but instead he takes the lift down to the Staging Area. He halts in the hangar before a wall of untreated concrete and it finally hits you after more than two months of walking by it:

amongst a mosaic of metal slivers and makeshift crew memorial plaques is a scrap of black alloy plate with a whisker of yellow at one edge and her name stencilled in white. This is the _crew’s_ Memorial Wall. They knew that. They just never thought about the fact that Fiona would be here too.

There are no photos, no plaques. Just names: engraved, burnt, chiselled, painted. Every Strike Trooper, Spotter, Tech, Pilot, Programmer, Instructor who died in service of the PPDC with someone to remember them is here.

 _This,_ Sorvino says quietly when he’s sure he and his co-pilot have their attention, _is the true beating heart of the Corps._

Captain-Father is gazing up at that little yellow shard with a thousand-yard-stare. How many nights _they_ went to the Kwoon, they wonder, did he come _here_?

This is the way, he says, cutting off Sorvino with a look, that the Corps remembers its own. Not the way the media does. These two places are where they will _always_ find something of the people lost along the way. It’s the where, the why, the how of continuing to fight. It’s everyone who’s ever died, and everyone who will. Everyone who gave them a reason to fight and everyone who showed them how. It’s something separate from the war—something to hold onto.

He turns away from the Wall and the twins realise that for the first time since they arrived they honestly have no idea who they’re looking at. He fits none of the patterns of Father-Captain-Ranger-Commander. They don’t know who he is.

 _This_ is their duty, he says. Above and beyond all the media crap, the politics, the performance reviews, the budgets and manuals and polishing their Ranger tabs—just this:

Remember the fallen. And never, _never_ dishonour them by giving any less than all.

There’s a bitterness in his voice that sets an ache in their hearts, and a distant set to both men’s eyes that sticks them in place unmoving until the morning crew comes on-deck for muster. It’s older than the War.

 

 

Tahnee wonders aloud to Dana about that as they lie in their bunks in the dark. What is in his head to make him talk that way.

Dana, her eyes shut so they don’t play tricks on her in the dark, suggests they don’t find out. If Tahnee wants to know so badly, she should ask the Marshal about a sync-Drift. But remember that she would see into Captain-Father’s mind with the same intensity she sees into Dana’s.

That’s enough to get a quiet _ew_ and Tahnee drops the subject. But Dana thinks she knows who was talking; she thinks maybe, just maybe, they met _Derek_ down in the hangar today. And if so, was it the first anyone had seen of him since Jayapura? Because the way Dana heard it, when one pilot died the other did too—regardless of how many bodies were pulled from the wreckage still breathing.

 

… …

_You’re eighteen, and you’ve accepted that the footage from Venator’s Conn-Pod footage will never be released to the public. You just don’t understand how you can be family and still count as ‘public’._

… …

 

 

Unnerved by Scarada the UN elect to move their Australian assets south ahead of schedule. The Sydney Shatterdome is not complete. It’s functional by now, it’s just not finished. Still. The change unsettles a few feathers. While there’s some surreptitious fistbumping going on under the triplets’ bit of the table, the twins don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of the senior command crews sequester themselves individually after the Rangers are dismissed from the conference room.

Lucky is going, as is Nomad. Kurago, Krieger informs them through the vid-screen is too. _Pack your bags, Rangers. You’re shipping out._

Back to Sydney.

 

 

Dana’s distracted and one of the triplets jams his knuckle into a nerve cluster that leaves her sick and gasping on the mat. This triplet has the smoothest hairline and a pale line of an oven burn across one forearm: Cheung.

If they die in the field this will be the last time the Colliers set eyes on a Wei. From her stretch at the edge of the mat Tahnee lightly informs Cheung that Dana would consider this a great shame, but even moreso if she suffocates in the Kwoon, and to please stop kneeling on her twin’s throat.

Cheung laughs, shifts his weight. The red doesn’t fade from Dana’s face when he rocks back onto his heels. The twins’ Mando is nowhere near conversational but she gets the gist when he asks dispassionately if she’s going to be sick.

She might be. There’s an unpleasant pulsing in her solar plexus from the knuckle-strike he landed before the takedown. A shadow of a grin she might be imagining wavers at the corner of his mouth; in English he advises her to wait a few seconds and then roll onto her back. He too would consider it a shame if this was the last time she ever laid eyes on his pretty face. He much prefers them to the Hansens. (Not that that’s saying much.) Try a deep breath, he suggests. Like everything, he says this too will pass.

 

 

The Jaegers are transferred by aircraft carrier—three of them in a line. The most heavily-armoured ducks the twins have ever seen.

They stand atop the Shatterdome to watch the procession pull out to sea, feeling their insides stretch like holding onto each others’ wrists and spinning too fast. They should be travelling with her.

There’s a taut expression on Hansen-the-Elder’s face as they all stack into a Lear that says maybe they’re not alone in feeling that way, but Herc’s wrapped up in getting Chuck to turn off his tablet for take-off and Scott’s pulled his cap down and gone to sleep.

 

 

In Sydney K-Sci, Air Support and Trooper facilities are separate. They can no longer ‘accidentally’ wander into the Air squadron’s breakrooms. Tahnee seems a little put out by this. (Though she gets around it: some days she wanders in before dinner with helmet hair or a new bar trick, and Dana now knows Bo smells like Axe and tugs his earlobe when frustrated, though Tahnee doesn’t know what he tastes like.) But this ‘dome is slick—smaller. More compact, tucked up on a headland where a beach nobody really uses anymore has been half-swallowed by steel and concrete, and only diehard surfers brave the blue at daybreak to watch Troopers and Rangers run sand laps.

At the other end of the day, if they sit on the Staging Area roof in the gathering dusk they can watch the landing lights of planes angle low to land in the west. There are less of those than there used to be.

 

 

It’s the first of April and instead of doing paperwork they’re watching the opening minutes of a _Hot Jaeger Twins XXX_ lookalike video. It’s supposed to be a joke, forwarded to them by a friend from the Academy. April Fools. ( _You’re public domain now, chicas! Rule 34: roll with it._ ) And it kind of _is_ funny (Tahnee doesn’t make those noises; Dana isn’t pierced there).

But there’s something chilling about it too. Something voyeuristic, exploitative. It’s the feeling of watching a thousand strangers thousands of kilometres away mourn for their mother, and the vitriol their father spewed at them like a plasma caster when they told him so.

It’s a fork frozen halfway to Sorvino’s mouth; Captain-Father staring like he’s just remembered he _has_ daughters; the stinging in their eyes when they don’t cry at being called juvenile little shits _do you think this is optional? This is part of the gig, goes with the territory_. They know where the door is, or strap that shit down and Ranger on. Transmission ends _._

 

… …

_You’re seventeen, and you have a note in your file: personable but private. The psychologists tell you this will hinder the Drift. You try harder._

… …

 

 _Ya dad’ll kill you,_ Sorvino says idly, leafing from one design to the next. There are two: Dana’s is gears, pinions, flys; Tahnee’s is circuitry, transducers, resistors. At six feet away both resolve to solid black.

 _You’re not our dad,_ Dana reminds him.

 _I’m not going to kill you either._ He pushes up from the Rec Room’s metal table with a sigh but there’s a bounce to his step as he heads for the door and he smooths his moustache in a way they haven’t seen since Kodiak. _All right, chickadees, let’s go get a car._

 

They sit on the roof of the Staging Area at dusk with stinging biceps, but this time they aren’t watching the planes that flee. Instead they watch an ant-size silhouette running laps on the broader north beach where the Rangers do in the morning:

Chuck raging against his own unphysicality where his father isn’t there to judge him.

No one’s taught him how to train smart yet. Even from here, his technique is shoddy and he’ll do an ankle going the way he is. He’s just flailing at the loose muck above the tidemark. Powering away with brute bloody-mindedness in the dusk. Did they look like that, they wonder, in the slush and the mud after Jayapura?

Down on the beach Chuck trips on circuit eighteen and bounces back to his feet before the beachcombers at the waterline can look his way.

 

It’s late night a week later when Scott jumps into the lift with them. They're still alive. He’s going for ground, and they’re going for twelve, but he says he can wait and his fingertips drum doubletime on the handrail.

The PPDC Public Address/ National press junket is tomorrow. Monthly psych eval with Patel tonight. (Patel. Terror of Level Twelve. Fifty-three and every one of those years must have been spent interrogating Al-Quaeda and breaking Yakuza.) Their arms still itch, although the tattooing technique used in the salon recommended by the deck-techs heals faster than ink. They still look ragged—and he tells them so. He also says he has something that’ll help. (They don’t joke that it’s crabs.)

The tablet he holds out is pale orange amid the yellow caplets of Metharocin. Stamped with a tiny sun. They’re not sure they want the kind of help it’ll give them.

He cracks his gum as he tells them to relax in a powerful exhale; the smell of mint is so powerful they wonder if he ate the whole packet. It’s the smile he wore they day they met him—razor-edged and off-kilter. And then there’s his flush. Blown pupils.

Nothing that wouldn’t be unusual after PT. Except wearing his bag, not sweats, and the Hansens hit the gym in the AM. They won’t give Patel anything to suspend them. They won’t give Merriman anything to take Kurago away.

Scott’s shoving the tin back into his pocket before they speak. He scents trouble in the air like a dog, they said once. Scents its absence too. _Suit yourselves,_ he drawls. They leave him leaning on one wall with arms folded, eyes closed as he cracks his gum and rides the lift down.

 

 

General Krieger flies in to give a speech about the opening of a South Pacific Shatterdome. Marshal Merriman is introduced as local CO. There’s a lot of handshaking and posing for pictures in their blues. (How much fussing by stylists over women with short hair? How exasperated are the twins when the make-up artist’s response to _we’re here to kill kaiju not look good in pictures_ is _oh, honey,_ everybody _needs to look good in pictures?_ ) Merriman makes some noise about ‘bringing the boys home’ and hurries to assure a tittering crowd he means the Jaegers. He is apparently unaware all three are considered female by commanders and crew.

Kurago is the only rig that hasn’t been battle-tested and it shows in her reception. They wait for someone to crack the obligatory _dingoes-ate-my-baby_ joke during the public address panel and the punters don’t disappoint. The girls laugh it off with Aussie aplomb, but Tahnee has to kick Dana under the table to keep the witty snap-back right where it’s supposed to be: unsaid.

_Dingo Courage? Dingoes don’t really have ‘courage’, wouldn’t you say…?_

_You ever seen one go up against a German Shepherd?_ Dana asks. Tahnee’s knee presses against hers under the table.

Over the table, Tahnee says, _If the definition of ‘being courageous’ is being afraid of something, and doing it anyway—_

— _then what else do you call the ones who know there are traps and guard dogs and poisoned bait on properties, but keep going anyway?_ Dana’s smile is loaded, pointed at the speaker like a rifle.

Tahnee tenses at ‘poison’; her elbow shifts a quarter inch atop the table to nudge Dana’s.

 _Pests?_ someone mutters.

The girls grin. _Exactly._

Are _you afraid of the kaiju?_ Someone else: sharper eyes, shrewder mouth.

The girls don’t have to look at each other to know they’re wearing the same sweet, sardonic smile. _Reckon you’d have to be crazy to strap on a twenty-storey nuclear reactor and walk out into the sea to fight sea monsters, and not be a little afraid,_ Dana says quietly.

_But we do it anyway. Isn’t that the point?_

They call Kurago _war-dog_. The press call her _runty_.

The dissenters are spread out but they’re _loud._ Mingling with the crowd, the girls hear the malcontents like personal attacks. Dana’s shins are bruised by half-time. It pales to overhearing a financier too deep into his champagne flute running a head-to-toe commentary on Venator versus Nomad. From the other side of the group Captain Collier stares. Arms behind his back at ninety degrees, his frame is so rigid he could be armature of himself. The financier carries on guffawing and slapping shoulders like he’s regaling the good old boys.

 _Does he know?_ Tahnee murmurs.

 _That Dad’s about to cave his face in in three point eight seconds?_ Dana murmurs back. _Guess not._

The financier’s accent is narrower; more English around the vowels. South Australian. Adelaide developer, they’d guess. This is the moment Sorvino steps up beside Captain-Father and puts a hand on his elbow.

 _So maybe you fellas can tell me,_ the financier chuckles, _why exactly we’re taking a chance on a Jaeger that’s already gone down once._ He emphasises the ‘ah’ in _chance._ _I mean, Christ, one of the pilots died last time, didn’t they?_

There, behind Captain-Father’s eyes: the flare of their mother’s temper. (how much crosses in the Drift?) But they always were opposites: _She did,_ he says frigidly.

Sorvino’s hand closes like a vice on his arm. Sorvino pulls them away from the group without excusing them and they slip away into the crowd. The twins don’t have to watch the sway of their shoulders to know their pace is perfectly synced. There’s a breath the twins didn’t know they were holding lodged in their throats. The exhale is loud enough to draw the group’s attention.

 _Ah,_ cries the financier, mollified from the departure of Rangers by the arrival of new ones. _Maybe you girls can shed some light onto what the bloody hell just happened. Thought you lot were supposed to be trained to be respectful and all that._

Dana’s eyebrows draw together.

 _With respect, Sir—_ Tahnee bites off the ‘t’

 _—the man you were just talking to?_ Dana says.

_—was our father._

_Captain Collier._

_Venator’s other pilot,_ Tahnee says, viciously bland.

_The short of it is, it’s cheaper to refit an old Jaeger than build a new one—_

_But as you’re with the Lambert Group_ – Tahnee nodded to the small silver pin in his lapel _—_ _we trust you already know that. If you’d like to know more about Nomad that doesn’t come from the Channel Nine News—_

_—or get a more than rudimentary understanding of your associates’ investment—_

_—we suggest you talk to the engineering representative in the brown jacket over there. Yellow ribbon in his lapel; his name is Holloway. Excuse us._

The men around him cough, touch their hair and adjust their cufflinks. In their wake they hear the financier snort like a spooked bull. _Hold up, that bloke wasn’t a Hansen?_

Nomad are nowhere to be found for the rest of the day.

 

 

That’s in April. The _Collier-Lite-half-the-age-twice-the-life-expectancy_ quips stick around—as do all the dingo cracks.

They stop being funny on May 11th.

 

 

Crossfire goes live at ten-hundred hours on a Tuesday.

Category-II north of Auckland. This time when the Kaiju alarms go off they’re accompanied by a sonorous boom: _Dingo Kurago, report to the suit room. Dingo Kurago to the Suit Room—_

That’s the last thing that goes to plan: the category-4 cyclone that’s been brewing for weeks chooses today to make landfall; Cyclone Josie interferes with flight patterns; atmospherics interfere with comm lines; before they make the engagement radius, a spotter Hawk goes down in the storm. (No one’s quite sure how. It wasn’t anyone the twins knew, and there’s a slight guilty sourness in the wash of relief for that.)

 _Fucking Tuesdays,_ Tahnee mutters into her faceplate, forgetting they don’t have the comms on silent. There’s a muffled snort, then Santos’ voice: _I feel you, girl._

Kelly Nomad and Dingo Kurago suited up at the same time—but they don’t land together.

 _Kelly Nomad is fift—n minut—out. Hold position there._ The comms break up with the storm. Or that’s what they’ll say later.

_Say again, LOCCENT. We’re two mikes out, intercept trajectory. He’ll breach the city in ten. We’re going now._

By the time everyone’s on the ground, it’s Nomad coming to _Kurago’s_ rescue in the Hauraki Gulf, not the other way around. Except there is no rescue.

Gallowtail’s big, reptilian, and he seems bigger from Kurago’s low Conn-Pod. They don’t let it stop them kicking up spume and ploughing through the six-foot troughs on a collision course.

They take him off-guard. Kurago fires off a four-strike combination before he gathers himself and hits back. They dodge two swipes and take a headbutt to the belly before they can roll out of the way of the third. The impact slides them back maybe thirty metres before they dig in enough to stop it. Distant on the comms is LOCCENT ( _seven minutes to Nomad’s touchdown! Hold on—)_ but they’re barely listening. Kurago’s plates grate and shriek alarmingly but they hold.

Everything is

—sweat burning in their eyes like _fire Jesus, Wei, why didn’t you warn me that was a chilli why’s there no_ water in the dam and you _land hard pain like electricity jarring up_ _from_ a busted ankle you’ll have to sit out this _Round Two to_ _Collier thought she was a_ Nak Muay have better technique on flying _elbows are equipped with titanium alloy spikes as a back up if your stingblades are neutralised_ —

They drive an armoured elbow into the top of Gallowtail’s skull. They’re not sliding back anymore. They feel the bedrock beneath their feet. Whirr of their mighty heart. Tingle of electricity through their suits. Everything moves, for a moment, very slowly. They think they smell grease and golden syrup.

Gallowtail screams and everything speeds up again. He pushes away. Blue sprays out of his skull as their elbow yanks clear and an enormous wave slaps both Jaeger and kaiju sideways.

They’re starting to grin at the cheering through the radio when Kurago is slammed sideways again—the opposite direction to the waves. Their breath catches and they clap hands to their ribs.

— _damn that hit_ hard to save her it’s not even your land how fucking dare _you didn’t even say goodbye we had to hear it on the_ radio saying late last night in _Jayapura_ —

They don’t let it take them. Hull breach, right side abdomen.

Logic crashes in like a Staff Sergeant at three AM: the chopper. Scarada.

They don’t see but Tahnee’s sketching out the rough shape in the Drift even as it solidifies in front of them. Gallowtail looses a rattling hiss and skitters back. In the rage of the storm he’s a loosely-defined mountain of knobbly grey spangled with bioluminescence beyond Kurago’s floodlights. And behind him—Gallowtail explodes from the white-capped swell.

They’re already side-stepping. There’s no time to think of the Hawk that went down. Kurago swings bodily aside and

—xenomorph hissing black slick _shiny in the sun the Hawk swoops out of the way_ —

snatches blindly at something grazing past their thigh and latches onto Gallowtail just below the coccyx. Twin lines of bioluminescence flare along his armoured tail like landing lights. Gallowtail lets out a rattling shriek and thrashes. Joints all over Kurago ripple and lock in response; they’re not letting him go to take them out like the spotters.

Damage reports flash up on the HUD: surface wound punched through her anterior plating, superficial tangent. Hull integrity at 93%. They feel it more than read it.

But they’re already deploying the stingblades, arm swinging back, up, muscles bunching, teeth bared. Gallowtail’s screech as Kurago severs muscle and bone in a spurt of blue sounds like the thunder of creation. He is enraged. They are

— _elated for you, chickadees, Second Cut(!) aren’t we elated_ Derek Collier the only survivor of the wreck of Mark-One Tasmania Venator guess nobody told them they’d have to _duck_ —

Gallowtail’s forelimb flies at the Pod. They were holding him too close to turn back and savage them but now he’s found the range. It’s the kind of mad swing that took down Venator. Kurago barely moves in time. Later, they’ll watch the replay and realise it’s only because she’s small that it was enough. Smaller than Venator. Tahnee thinks it in the Pod anyway.

—black yellow _blue there on the waves it looks like they managed to inflict some superficial damage but he’s still_ not ready Daz are you trying to kill yourself as _well as can be expected considering_ Jayapura—

They waver. Dropping into that crouch feels like an abyss is opening up underneath them. In the abyss is

— _guess nobody told ‘em they had to_ duck that hitI taught you to try _hard to save her it’s not even your land how fucking dare_ you didn’t even say goodbye we had to hear it on the _radio saying late last night in_ Jayapura on the way to Port Moresby and it looks like the left side of the Conn-Pod has been crushed by that _swing a hanbo at my_ skulls are for pirates we’re—

Kurago. The tail went limp in her hand when she severed it; turning their collapse into an ellipse, they tighten their grip on the base with one hand, and grab just under the spike with the other. Planting their feet, they shove _up_. (Angling at the outside of his swing. Body twisting from the hips.) The point punches straight up through the soft underside of his jaw.

His scream is gargled. He is drowning—suffocating. But he’s still fighting. If they live long enough, when they are old women, they will tell their grandchildren they never saw something fight like a kaiju. He shoves Kurago away and reels backwards clawing at his own jaw. Even as he topples back they are striding forward, closing the distance.

 _Thre— minutes out —urago!_ Someone on the comms is hissing through his teeth (Merriman, a Hughie) and someone else is yammering specs, clearing airspace for the Hawks, but it’s drowned by their father. Their father, forgetting radio protocol, calling them _Tahnee_ and _Dana,_ telling them Nomad is almost there.

Gallowtail writhes in the surf like an eel. The trunk of his tail drags through the water, an outlandish beard slopping luminous blue into the Gulf. More spills from the stump and the split in the top of his skull. The twins are, briefly, bizarrely, reminded of skinks thrashing in the sun with their tails lopped off. He trumpets the attack and bounds clear of the surf.

Everything sharpens into clarity: the zero-point focus of the fight finally locks into place. There are no girls, there is only Kurago. There is no Rako, only Gallowtail. They are not their mother. They are not their father. And this fight is over.

Kurago sidesteps. His momentum carries him straight into the arm they loop around his snout. One hand latches cleanly onto the tail jammed into his jaw like a handle. Then, using both as levers, they jag him. Jaeger and kaiju wheel around together. (Somewhere in the hazy comms there’s a whoop that might be a boxer appreciating footwork.) The movement rolls him half onto his side, bares his underbelly. He’s shaking his head like a pissed-off dog and it takes everything they have to hold on, but they do, recalibrating balance, shifting all their weight to one knee. The other punches through his ribcage like battering ram.

An elbow to the skull didn’t stop him. Neither did pinning his mouth shut with his own tail. Kneeing his sternum through his guts does.

His whole body sags as they wrench clear of the carnage. Their knee feels warm. As does their elbow, come to think of it. And their chest. Today they will _not_ be allowed to help the techs clean her up.

Clear of the anchor of Gallowtail’s mass they stagger as storm hits them anew, and then find their feet. They’re breathing hard. Heart hammering against their ribs. Bio-rhythms all over the shop. But they’ve won. They’ve really, genuinely won.

— _blue black-_ and-yellow Jaeger walking down George Street betting aside confetti like _snow_ _Jesus Christ it’s fucking cold out here Na-na I_ don’t want to hear about it a seven-nation army couldn’t hold me _back up you’re the Collier twins(?) that’s my brother_ on your _left(!)_ _us sitting in that kitchen with the bottle of scotch saying he’d talk to Marshal Pentecost about_ Derek they’re **not** going to the _Academy_ _but today you are graduating into a brave new tradition, congratulations_ Rangerslost in Jayapura no news yet about the state of the survivor—

Gallowtail’s corpse rolls with the surf; they have the thought at the same time. Gripping the frill, they lift his head clear of the water. (To the outside eye maybe it looks like they detected movement.) To the inside… Merriman’s commandeered a comm, so _what—hell—doing Rangers!_ is buzzing in their ear along with the adrenaline, but—The crack must echo all the way across the Ditch to Sydney.

 _No kill like overkill,_ Dana mutters. The Drift is lighting up the insides of their eyes like sunlight on snow. The kaiju slips back into the water boneless as overcooked noodles just as the push of Nomad’s landing hits them like a bow-wave. The twins can hear labrats going ape in the background of LOCCENT.

 _Ten sec—til engagement._ Sorvino is warm with humour on the open line. Nomad touched down half a kilometre from Kurago, and as she wades towards ‘Little Sister’ the girls can see her shaking her head slightly as if her pilots have forgotten their handshake.

 _Bloody rude,_ they make out from the patchy comms. _Not sharing,_ and _didja—raise—in a barn, Daz_ ; buried in the background noise is a tremulous beat that might be static or their father’s shaky laughter.

Into the silence of Kurago’s Pod, Tahnee addresses the comms. _Dad, can you hear us?_

There’s a moment where all they can think is: we took down a kaiju. Guts through its spine, and a spray of blue. Dana’s mind offers a picture of Ellen Ripley—and Tahnee comes back with a Chestburster exploding into blue with Ripley suckerpunching its lights out.

Ripley becomes their mother. Their mother becomes Venator, Venator becomes Nomad; Nomad, with two pilots and half a soul, and the echo of Captain-Father’s laughter still rattling in the their skull.

Into the silence of Kurago’s Pod, Tahnee addresses the comms. _Dad, can you hear us?_

There’s a moment where they can practically hear him: _radio protocol,_ and _SOP,_ and _don’t use names over the comms—_ and then he murmurs, _yeah._

 _That_ _was for Mum._

This silence fills the comms from all points. For a moment that stretches to a minute that lengthens to an age they are alone in the ocean with a dead kaiju, the thump of their heart, a rush of waves and the buzzing static of lines shredded by the storms. Maybe he says something and they miss it.

Either way, Nomad inclines her head and Norouzi’s distorted voice is asking them if they see the disposal co-ordinates blinking on their HUD map.

It’s Blue Oyster Cult and White Stripes – _Don’t Fear The Seven Nation Army of Suzy Lee_ – all the way home.

 

… …

_You’re nineteen and you’re a hero. Does it mean what it meant at the start?_

… …

 

The doc who does the post-deployment exam diagnoses them with adrenaline overdose and fatigue. They’re not shaking anymore but they’re exhausted, high-strung and trying not to grin like loons. Marlow’s official treatment is to go get a milkshake at the local pub before they hurt themselves. (Or someone else.)

They comply, struggling to keep the straight faces that held for the flight back, the hose-down, the debrief _and_ the medical exam. Now seems like a good time to not be in front of anyone who might have them re-tested for psychosis.

Every muscle aches. Their vision is doubled. And they keep telling techs across the room not to talk so loud: they’re hearing with each other’s ears, and they’re retroactively aching for Kurago’s audio-input filtration because everything is _sharp_ out here and the air on their bare, damp skin feels new and hostile.

They’ve been shelled, Tahnee’s brain whispers into the hangover. Like boiled eggs. It’s less a hangover than an umbilical cord. They are embryonic. That’s why they feel vulnerable and unstable. They cling to each other as they pour aching limbs into fresh coveralls after showering, leaning on each other more than they need to. It’ll pass.

Meantime, they walk shoulder to shoulder, wrist to wrist, heads turning in unison and a tingle in knee/shoulder/elbow like their bodies haven’t quite worked out they’re disconnected from Kurago yet.

Lucky’s just back from a patrol, called back from Indonesia at the same time the call-out for Kurago came through. The men fall back from the nurse escorting them to Medical to grin.

 _Hey, Kurago._ There’s a jovial, older-brotherly touch to it that doesn’t blot out the ‘Kurago’. Like they are a single entity. ( _You are Dingo Kurago, and you have never had another name_.)

_Heard you caught yaselves a big one._

_Some pretty slick moves, ‘ccording to LOCCENT._

The twins tip their chins up, grinning like loons. (Though they’ll wait and see what Merriman says in full debrief tomorrow.) Scott asks when they’ll be hitting up the _thousand_ parties guaranteed to be starting up in town right now but Tahnee's shaking her head; maybe later. Food. Sleep. They need to come back down to normal.

_Normal’s overrated._

The look his brother gives him is unreadable. (And yet, Dana thinks, they’ve seen it before.) Scott eyes the space between them (the lack of it) and smiles. When they stop velcroing, he says, maybe they should try and get out there. Nothing quite like a Ranger party.

The Hansens step aside to let them pass, but just as the twins do the men throw up a salute that’s less sloppy than it is deadly in-earnest. There’s that buzzing in the girls’ extremities again—like synapse wires under their skin and bone frames too light (fragile) after steel to hold their parts together.

 

… …

_You are nineteen, and only half of you thinks that look in blue eyes isn’t worth the clenching in your belly._

… …

 

There’s a café up the coast that _knows_ their regulars are pretty well all Corps, and like a sixth sense they seem to expect it when the women let Nomad drag them out of bed for celebratory milkshakes. Two stools appear at the bar like magic (two empty ones alongside them), and tall, cold metal cups of milkshakes not long after that. Strawberry and lime. Dana cops the usual flak about citrus and dairy. It’s a toss-up between sticking her tongue out and flipping Tahnee off so she does both.

Outside’s a gloriously blue morning; seagulls are squabbling over bits of fried lentil patty three kids are throwing; the twins are drinking their calorie intake for the day; the kaiju for the quarter is dead; and the owner won’t let Rangers pay for anything. He polishes a photo of a young man in J-tech coveralls in between glances at their end of the counter to ensure they want for nothing and and slaps a plate of apple slices down between their cups proprietarily.

What they want is peace: the echoes are _loud_. Moreso than after patrol. They didn’t expect that. Nor did Dana expect to feel so curiously alone in her head. Instinctually she wants to run back up to Kurago and hook in again. ( _Watch yourselves, cadets._ The voice of memory is deep and even and it brings back images of bunk inspections and formal evaluations in an office that smelt faintly of copper and propane from a single-burner heater on a table in the corner. _In a strong pair, the Drift can be addictive._ )

Tahnee’s leaning back against Dana, only half on her own stool, idly stirring bubbles out of her milkshake. Dana noses her ear and twitches her chin past Nomad – who are arguing about cricket – to a man in Trooper drabs watching the four of them from the other end of the café. Tahnee shifts her weight against Dana. Not her type. Dana’s chuckle is barely audible; does Tahnee have a type? Tahnee wriggles again so her elbow digs into Dana’s ribs, and then nestles her head back into the crook of her sister’s neck and shoulder. Of course she does. Just: right now her type is ‘Jaeger’, and she will only accept it manifested in Dana.

From the way the man perks up, she guesses they’ve both been staring vaguely in his direction. She shakes her head against Tahnee’s and then cranes her neck back to get at the straw of her milkshake.

 _You all right, Sweetpea? Snowpea?_ Captain Collier has broken off arguing Kline-vs-Poyo to look past his co-pilot. He’s been smiling more broadly in the last sixteen hours than he has in two years; only occasionally does he break off to exchange troubled stares with Sorvino. The women nod lazily. They're fine.

At the other end of the café, the Trooper looks disappointed. A shadow darkens the door: Bo folding his broad-shouldered frame through it, followed by several other AS staffers. No sign of Santos. (But spotter pilots, Dana reminds herself, aren’t welded at the hip the way Rangers are.) She keeps her face straight and nudges Tahnee. Still not her type?

There’s a momentary pause, and if she couldn’t feel the twitch of muscle in Tahnee’s back as the straw keeps stirring she’d think her twin had fallen asleep. Tahnee’s head angles towards the arrivals, and there’s a quick smile across Bo’s face (white against his brown skin) that suggests Tahnee smiled at him, but she doesn’t move.

Not her type right now.

 

… …

_You are born reaching out for each other, and you will die the same way._

… …

 

There is a party. There is a _big_ fucking party.

It’s one of Scott’s ‘thousand’ and they’re not sure they’ll make it through one, let alone a hundred. Fleet Week is less than a fortnight away, and the guy in front of them is not the first to slurringly suggest everyone just carry on through. Dana shakes her head, smiling, and ducks out from under his arm. He’s a little on the weedy side for a Trooper, and she doesn’t remember the Academy spitting them out so small. Or maybe it’s just that after headlocking a twenty-five-storey seamonster one’s perspective gets a little skewed.

Tahnee is standing by the bar with Scott when Dana spots the back of her head through the sea of bare arms and swaying bodies. She’s a silhouette of dark green and black with electric blue shadows in the lights swinging over the dance floor. Blacklight paint slicks her spine with fluro orange and yellow. A Centipede. They have matching designs. Dana guesses it’s _supposed_ to be reminiscent of kaiju, and wonders if there’s something psychological about stripping the fear in holding a post-takedown theme party in a kaiju shelter. The bar bunnies are kitted out in scanty mock-up drivesuit pauldrons and quad plates over their lacy thigh-highs, the bass-heavy music is all Jaegerstomp, and the drinks are called things like Shatterdome and Railgun. The flagship Gallowtail is Curacao and Galliano, and something else with a kick like a quarterhorse.

It’s one of those Tahnee is finishing off when Dana writhes through the crush towards them. She pushes it at Dana. Her nose is wrinkled up and she makes that smacking sound in the back of her mouth the dog used to when she got a mouthful of talcum powder as payback for chewing bathroom supplies.

Dana takes it with a shrug. Waste not. Scott gestures to a bar bunny (throws in a smirk and a wink). A schooner of lager appears.

 _Put that away, Hansen,_ Tahnee orders. _I’m not drinking that piss._

He laughs. It blends with stock sounds in the music, heavy and strong as a kaiju’s heartbeat. (Dana’s pretty sure that’s what the thumping _is_ : it reminds her of biology lectures on Kodiak.) _What’ll you have then?_

_Bar’s free for national heroes._

_‘National heroes’, hey_? He’s teasing, but it’s the tone he uses on Chuck. Tahnee drapes her arm around her twin’s waist. She smells like saltwater and expensive perfume.

 _Let a bloke pretend to be charming, would you,_ Scott’s saying.

Tahnee smiles. _Fine. Fine, I’ll have a ginger beer._

 _Ginger—_ A friendly hand pats her shoulder. More laughter. When did Scott get so close? They could swear he was further away a second ago, although his feet haven’t moved, and it feels like someone switched up the coding on the Verocitor Sim on them.

Kobayashi Maru _,_ whispers a voice in Dana’s mind. Tahnee smiles.

They smell Scott’s breath. His cologne. Tahnee’s fingers are curled around Dana’s hip; it’s not to anchor Dana.

 _You’re killing me here, gorgeous,_ Scott says, and his eyes are on the space between them. The lack of it. _You really are young, aren’t you._

 _Hey now,_ Dana interjects. _Old enough to drink, old enough to—_

 _Hunt kaiju?_ His smell is cedar and spice, and something like smoke. It wraps around them, twining through the sweat and desire pouring off the dance floor, and they wonder if there’s not a little desperation there too. Maybe that’s why when they said they wanted to go someplace, he guided them straight here.

 _Yeah,_ Tahnee says. _That._

Another gesture to the bartender. This one sharper. Backlit like a photoshoot. ( _I love this place; no paparazzi.)_ _Here_ , he says.

_Matso?_

_Bit more of a kick than straight ginger beer. If you think your dad won’t mind. Or your god-dad, come to that. Don’t fancy a blue with either of ‘em._ He’s teasing again, but it’s a different tone this time. Like the idea of a genuine fight with Captains Collier or Sorvino has never once crossed his mind. He doesn’t think it’s a threat. They do.

_Piss off. I love my father but I’m an adult._

_Are you now._ He turns his body away as he says it, smiling at the bartender.

Tahnee knows she’s being baited; she doesn’t answer.

Dana does. The spotlight finds them just as she says, _yeah, you’re such an adult? What’re you drinking?_

Scott leans back on an elbow and toasts them with the tumbler as they’re (affectionately) dragged away. _Bourbon._

 

… …

 _You are nineteen, and Scott introduces you to the other face from The Kowloon Photo –_ this is my big bro, Herc; he keeps me out of trouble—right, mate? – _and you don’t realise yet that the look on Ranger Hansen’s face is not scepticism._

… …

 

The email the twins send the Beckets is short:

_ha ha, we deployed._

The response is succinctly retaliatory: _ha ha, we’re getting a Mark-III._

But Raleigh attaches photo taken from an Icebox gantry captioned, ' _isn’t she gorgeous; we’re thinking WWII bomber names',_ and Yancy’s snuck a picture of Raleigh the little yellow WWII dog-mascot of RAAF Wing 81 onto the end. ( _This’ll be our nose-art_.)

 

 

Dana makes a point of learning the names of the Spotters who died to make Gallowtail earn his name. She talks to Norouzi, who talks to a clerk, who mutely holds a sheaf of folders out when Dana opens the door to a knock late one night.

Tahnee says don’t bother. Plenty more will die before the war is over; she’ll only hurt her heart. But Dana is insistent.

Flight Lieutenant Peter J. Cosgrove; Specialist Owen He Chang. Their chopper taken down thirty kilometres out from the Breach.

Dana stares at the photos until she can see them with her eyes closed. Tahnee calls her crazy: says she doesn’t know how they got past the psych exam, then takes her towel and slides the bathroom door closed to use up half the hot water in the ‘dome. Dana ignores her. It’s important to see the faces.

Records say Cosgrove had a daughter; Chang has two brothers also PPDC. That’s at least three people who will be in deep mourning right now, regardless of what happened after. She reminds Tahnee of that until her co-pilot caves and closes the laptop on her AAR draft. They attend the hanging of the men’s plaques alongside the rest of the air crews and the staffers who knew the men personally.

And when it turns out one of Chang’s brothers is present as well, both women look him in the eye and tell him, _your brother saved our lives._

 

 

Tahnee picks up learning the aerodynamics of rotary-craft flight again. Dana watches Tahnee’s foot twitch in time to _Suzy Lee_ as she lies in supine on her bunk scrolling through a flight manual, then turns back to drafting the short contribution they’re supposed to give at the Fleet Week opening following the Marshal’s address and the Hansens’ bit as resident Top Guns.

 

 

There’s a bunch of TV and magazine interviews first. They laugh, and smile, and swap names half a dozen times before someone gets wise and starts showing the interviewers headshots a week in advance to memorise.

The canniest man they ever meet sneaks his solution into a question – _can we see the tattoos_ – and seems disappointed when he doesn’t catch them out. (They almost decline—no stripping out of uniform on camera, that’s a standing order; the Gages did it last year and Krieger had an apoplexy. But beyond the host, their handler is nodding and Merriman is pushing a sexier image to speed the recovery from dissent over Kurago’s size.)

The stupidest woman they ever meet asks about tattoos as well: other Rangers’. RAAF on Captains Collier/Sorvino. Javi Piaget’s Santa Maria neck tatt. Kaidonovsky’s knuckles. The PPDC Oz Division on Herc’s arm ( _Angela_ on his other but nobody mentions that)—and hey, _Hansens_ : they’re the _other_ hot topic the local rags love.

But Dana’s saying no she doesn’t know where Scott’s tatts are when Tahnee says, _on his chest._ If the wolf whistles are deafening they’re still a distant buzz behind the mental needle-scratch of Dana’s surprise. She covers by theatrically tugging at her collar – _gets hot in the Kwoon sometimes, you know –_ but she looks taken aback on national TV and Merriman plays it back to them later, asking what that’s about, while Scott teases her about showing her any time she wants.

The way the interviewers carry on about that – Rangers banging, ‘intra-Shatterdome romance’, and the ever-popular limerence/gestalt/sexosomnia stories (two het cadets, too much alcohol and a security cam) – the Colliers are getting edgy.

Someone says: _so the Hansens—_

Someone says: _Venator—_

Someone says: _so what celebrities do you think you’d be Drift-compatible with—_

and irritation bites into their muscles like a cramp. Just to wind them up Dana replies: _you know, there is this one girl—_

It’s a joke – a PG-rated, handler-approved way of letting off steam at the repetition of a dozen interviews – but the speculation sticks. Doesn’t seem to matter that Tahnee cuts off the presenter’s thrill with a dry, _Me. She’s talking about me._

Scott calls her ‘Danny’ for days and offers to set her up with heavily-tattooed deck-techs (some of whom are straight anyway and frown when he drops by the Kennel specifically to make the cracks). The same techs ruffle her hair when he leaves and advise her to take a shower.

 

 

It bothers her less when Tahnee reports that Suzy Lee mysteriously gained a rainbow-coloured arm bandana now. Dana’s musing on that when the kitchen girl she off-handedly gave her flower to on Valentine’s Day shyly brings two mugs of hot chocolate over to their late night mess hall card game. She’s not sure who goes redder at the teasing from the other players, but she manages to thank the girl and when McCall jokes, _good to be the king, eh?_ , she and Tahnee exchange glances.

 _King?_ _We’re the bloody queens. Speaking of which, trip queens and I’m out. Thank you for your contributions, pay up._

As the techs groan and bitch, Dana glances over her shoulder. She wasn’t aware the girl had transferred. Tomorrow is the first day of Fleet Week and between that and the girl’s tiny smile from the kitchen door, Dana isn’t the least surprised to catch Tahnee cataloguing Dana's smile and returning one of her own. Damned if there isn’t something sweet and sardonic and serene about it.

 

 

Day One gets messy. They’re barely in the door of the Hyatt’s titanic penthouse before someone ramps the bass in the sound set-up loud enough to shake the building. Another of the ‘thousand’: two-storey penthouse that’s more gold and glass and cream suede than the women have ever seen; floor-to-ceiling windows; marble-top bar. More cheekbone and make-up than they’ve ever seen either—on women _and_ men. Kaiju theme.

The press event was _much_ more sedate (in a conference centre _far_ from anywhere cameras could catch Corps staff misbehaving—not that Merriman side-eyes a Hansen at that. And it went pretty well as expected. By now everyone knows the basic idea of Kurago: small and quick. Light on her feet. She’ll pace the new Mark-IIIs, despite having stiffer motion rigs and a slower synapse relay system. (It means they’re muscled like rowers after three months but that’s the trade-off.) But if everyone already knew that, it meant the journos were after fresher blood:

Kaiju Blue spread. Unit efficiency. Corps spending. Category IIIs and higher. Merriman did a fair job redirecting attention to _dead_ kaiju from _potential_ ones, but when that horse finally died he rolled out the Dev teams (new organic fibers; advances to be made from Kurago’s tech for the Mark-IV projects; pharmaceuticals). Once the journos got their teeth into that, they gnawed. From there it wasn’t difficult to steer attention away from lingering doubts about Kurago’s size/scale ratio.

The twins aren’t sorry: that journo from HK was back. He’d pointed out that they got lucky with Gallowtail: built like an iguana, there wasn’t much reinforcing in his skull to begin with.

 _If that was an iguana, Lucky Seven can handle the komodos_.

The press laughed like they were meant to but Dana didn’t like the way he scowled. Here the J-Tech crew stepped in, rolling out all that nitty-gritty of shiny new defence tech the public adore… All the pretties the PPDC is pushing up— _and_ , they hint (so smugly) confirmed alterations being made to China’s under-construction Mark-III as a product of the performance of Kurago’s unique joints. (The techies fail to mention that said ‘unique joints’ were based off the Weis’ sketches and that she was more a field test than a prototype, but no one brings it up either.)

Dana’s glad to be away from the spotlight (the dissenters). She’d hate to ruin a fancy dress by getting blood on it defending Kurago. (And they _are_ fancy: slinky and silky. Unlabelled but probably worth as much as half the training of the Rangers wearing them. Fancy, fancy dresses. Dana likes them. Tahnee’s more worried about ripping out a hem than how she looks for the cameras.)

Most of the respectable schmoozing was done at the conference. Psyching up for the night, the Colliers had roamed there (after a quick stop over to change into said fancy dresses)—and hunted Rangers. Sorvino, holding court by the buffet table; Captain Collier beside him laughing for a change; Herc in a corner talking to Marshal Pentecost (who flew in with General Krieger for the consult over whether to continue Crossfire). (Dana rammed Tahnee in the ribs for whispering that maybe Herc looks a little _too_ happy to see his superior, and maaaaaybe there was something in that happier-on-Kodiak crack.) There was a rumour the Jessops were coming down to see this baby Jaeger based off their rig, but they’d been nowhere to be found. Disappointed, the twins edged into Nomad’s circle. Smiled for the talking heads. Posed for a photo ( _keeping it in the family_ , _gosh you’ve got your mother’s eyes, November in the fundraising calendar—was that you under the mud?_ ) and bailed. _Excused_ themselves, and bailed. Bigger fish. Better drinks. (Shorter dresses.)

The tumble into the limo bound for the Hyatt was as graceful as they could make it with screaming hordes behind the crowd-control barriers. (The driver still chuckled.) But a short drive and a (second) quick change later landed them in Heaven as imagined by the Noughties _nouveau riche_ Hard House crowd. With more expensive alcohol and a better view.

The Jessops weren’t at the conference but this is the designated ‘Ranger’ party so if they’re in Sydney they’ll be here. Somewhere. So the twins go hunting.

Scott shooes away a male Jaegerfly from beside them at the bar an indeterminate time later. To Tahnee, he says it’s like everyone’s forgotten he exists after the women’s efforts in Auckland.

It’s a lie—but it’s a blatant one: the only kind he knows. He’s starting to relate the Epic Tale of Getting Chuck To Sit The Hell Down And Finish His Homework While Hansens Senior Bailed when Herc slings an arm around his neck, choking him off, and asks if he’s boring the ladies.

Scott’s struggling with the sleeper hold too much to respond; Dana wryly tells Herc he wasn’t. The bartender delivers Herc’s whiskey and rye in just enough time for him to taste it (one arm still locked around Scott) and ask Dana if she’s covering for his brother – because that’s a waste of breath – before Scott tries for an elbow to the solar plexus and Tahnee has to rescue Herc’s drink before it goes for six in the resulting scuffle. When they right themselves, Herc’s still got control.

Dana wasn’t covering, she says—but the punishment seems appropriate anyway. Herc laughs, letting Scott fight free, retrieves his drink and retreats. (Presumably to a quieter locale, maybe with a Marshal?)

 _Punishment? For what?_ Scott rasps, rubbing his throat. He side-eyes his brother until the other disappears from view in fluoroscopic crowd. _What’d I supposedly do this time?_

Dana and Tahnee shrug in unison and fix him with their best Captain Collier Kubrick Stare. _We don’t know_. _What_ did _you do?_

 _All right, that’s bloody creepy. Stop it. Here—this’ll sort you out._ Leaning over Tahnee, he says something to the bartender. A bull of a guy stumbles out of the crush and collides with Tahnee, apologising and laughing at the same time as he extracts his face from her breasts. He topples back into his mates with one ankle hooked by Dana’s and his friends howl. When the women turn back there are two Gallowtails waiting on the marble bartop. Tahnee looks at Dana; Dana pulls a face; Tahnee says thanks but no thanks.

Scott’s insistent. Scott’s exuberant. Scott’s—maybe enjoying that it’s Fleet Week and he doesn’t have patrol the day after tomorrow like they do a little too much, and how convinced were they _before_ tonight that Scott has a few streaks in him and one of them is coloured ‘sadism’? _Live a little_ , he says. _Rangers,_ he says, and _old enough to drink, old enough to… remember?_

They did say that, Tahnee reminds Dana. They did promise Javi and Guill a photo of the first night they got properly messed up as payout for a lost wager, and they _did_ forget at that last party. They drink.

Dana wrinkles her nose. Tahnee didn’t like Gallowtails last time; she still doesn’t now. The bartenders make them differently here. More bitter. Scott just grins and skips away into the dancefloor. (Skips, trips, something that involves more energy than he should have and more co-ordination than he does have. Something that leads to a smirking Italian model half-supporting him while his hands climb her torso like a ladder. Always lands on his feet, Scott. For a given value of that.)

The twins order Matsos to wash the taste out. Remind themselves of Kurago. Alcoholic or not, the ginger beers taste like _—_ sunburnt grass. Watching her decal dry black on red. Winning card games against techs.

They taste like freedom, the might to take on monsters, and summers dangling burnt feet in the dam. The twins clink bottles, then foreheads. Tahnee laughs that they hit too hard before Dana even swallows and lets a bulky Laotian model coax her into the crush. She's gone before Dana can grab blindly for her arm because _they’re here—_

They weren’t at the Press meet but there’s an honest-to-God _Jessop_ across the room now, and was it always so hot in here? There _are_ a lot of bodies writhing with the music. Dana needs to go talk to him before she loses all nerve. She guesses she’ll see the Hansens later. She guesses she’ll see Tahnee later. She guesses she’ll get hit for not telling Tahnee about Duc Jessop _immediately, you cow(!) Na-na how could you(!)_ but Tahnee’s dancing with her spotter, and Dana’s not at critical mass liquid courage yet. So:

Duc Jessop is unexpectedly suave. Charming, but _suave_. Japanese-Canadian. Taller than she is. Oddly sleepy eyes. Handsome. Very, very handsome. He’s…feline. This is the word she wanted. (She tells that to someone later, very earnestly, and their laugh is ripe with cherries and brandy.) Maybe Kaori. Kaori is—willowy. Short. Long glossy hair in a high ponytail and legs that go on forever. Smile like a floodlight. Smells like talcum powder and sunshine, and Dana definitely tells Duc that later. _His_ laughter thuds through her chest like the background music’s bassline but it doesn’t smell like cherries.

Tahnee’s back. Scott is challenging a man to a drinking contest and winning. The Colliers are cheering. The flashes here aren’t cameras and it’s… surprisingly relieving not to fear the public’s Eye of Sauron for just a little while. Scott doesn’t look drunk in the flashing lights.

He does when Dana collides with him later. His grin is toothier. His mannerisms more loose. Taffy-ish.

Dana frowns, and pulls him closer by a handful of two-hundred dollar shirt. _Are you high?_

 _Are you asking me to dance?_ he asks lazily, eyelids at halfmast. Under them his pupils are blown out to a thread of blue spiralling into black.

She asks again: _Hansen,_ are _you_ high?It’s too loud for the question – unguarded for this company – but no one else is paying attention.

 _I am happy_ , he corrects. His fingers twine through hers to loosen her grip on his shirt. _Like a unicorn. Or a sailor in a brothel._ Grinning, he punts her back into the crowd by the midriff and she’s swept up in the swell. Someone pulls her deeper. Bodies press in on all sides, hands slithering and sway overhead like kelp. She feels like she drowning but for once, it doesn’t feel bad. The lights go down and start to pulse in time to the bass building up to a massive drop.

The one who pulls her away in Kaori. There is dancing. There are shots. Kaori laughs and Dana tries vaguely to remember what she just said so she can say it again.

At some point, she makes a wager with someone. She doesn’t remember who with or what for but there’s a nose in her navel and the floor is slipping sideways. She finds her way back to the bar. The floor seems less steady, even though it’s back underfoot where it belongs. Dana is—

Drunk. Talking very earnestly to Duc Jessop; building joint models with toothpicks and cocktail cherries. Dana is scolding Kaori for _stealing_ her cocktail cherries. Dana is wondering how she knows Kaori _tastes_ like cocktail cherries and thinking it goes well with ginger; is that a visual thing, or did she ask Duc?

Kaori is arm-wrestling a weapons-manufacturing spokesman. Kaori is winning. Dana means to tell Tahnee that (they had a bet on something like that – a long time ago, in Academy quarters far, far away) but she finds Tahnee in the other room arguing with someone about Dizzy Flores, and Dana knows better than to get involved in that. Her head is spinning.

Now they’re _all_ dancing and Scott’s torso outlines the borders of Dana’s personal space like an exclusion zone, asking where her sister is. He seems less loopy than before, like his bones have set again. She tells him so with a giggle. (Giggle? Colliers don’t giggle.) He smells like aftershave and bourbon, too. And nicotine. Does Herc know Scott smokes?

Scott ignores the question and asks about Tahnee again. Dana points vaguely in the direction she last saw her twin.

She sees them later. Tahnee looks amused and a little tired. Scott, she says when Dana finally makes it to the couch they’ve collapsed on, is coming down. Crashing. Maybe burning.

That—should be less funny than it is. Why should burning not be funny? Something about Indonesia tickles the back of her mind, and a cold thing stirs in her guts like slush so she pushes it away.

 _Help a national hero to his room, would ya?_ Crashing. Probably burning. He looks rougher than last Dana saw but more jagged too, like something’s pulling him apart from the inside. Does he see Reckoner when he’s like this, she wonders lopsidedly.

 _Better make sure he doesn’t drown in his own puke or something,_ Tahnee mutters.

Scott drapes an arm around her neck with a slightly slurred, _that soun’s like a ‘yes’._

Dana helps them upright (swaying herself) and indicates to a broken path around the edges of the room; they won’t make it through the crush. Tahnee butts her head against Dana’s. Hits harder than intended.

A red patch on her forehead matches a dull stinging in Dana’s. _Ow,_ Tahnee mumbles, but it’s halfarsed and she grins through a squint when Dana complains,

_Oi, if you’re goin’ a do that, at least do a proper job of it. Harder head than rock, this. Me Ma always told me so—_

_—but me Da always said it was hers in the making,_ Tahnee rejoins. _Be back once I get this bludger t’ bed._

Dana waves away a bottle of beer someone offers her as Tahnee leaves with her burden. Instead she asks for another… hmm. Another Gallowtail. Sure.

This one is sweeter. Sweeter drink becomes sweeter Kaori and she _does_ taste like cherries but how does Dana know that—did Duc tell her? She’s laughing and she can’t remember why, but it has something to do with being ticklish and fancy, fancy dresses, _can’t fall down in the fancy fancy dress it’s worth half as much as I am, thank-you Sir, I_ did _need to be held up your wife won’t stop tickling me_ , and then everything is booming music and Duc’s booming laughter.

Supernovas burst in her head. She staggers. Makes it outside to the balcony. The world is spinning, and the faded sting of clonking foreheads with Tahnee is suddenly back throbbing full amp like the monster headaches described from cadets coming off a bad Drift. There’s an odd sick, disjointed, sensation in her guts: her centre of gravity shifted outside and a metre to the left.

The cold air seems to help. She’s outside for less than a minute though before someone grabs her hand and pulls her inside. Tahnee? The smells of ginger and grease and bourbon clog Dana’s nose and it feels like she’s going under again.

 

 

Someone gives them a lift back to the dome early in the morning—stark early, early enough that the currawongs are considering going back to bed. Dana doesn’t know why when Tahnee must be feeling as wretched as Dana is, but Tahnee’s up before dawn. There’s a restlessness to her Dana puts down to the hangover – she picks her way over the plush carpet barefoot like she’s creeping over rusty nails, and won’t look directly at the concierge who bids them goodbye – but once she’s up she’s up.

They spend the day in bed. Someone left a tray with bottle of ginger ale and paracetamol outside the door first thing, along with a tray of wheat biscuits, but they spend most of the day in bed anyway. Or in the bathroom.

Tomorrow they have a patrol. As least senior Rangers on-site they’re the ones who did _not_ get this week entirely off. Might as well do the most recovering they can, seeing as they’re going to feel like ratshit for it anyway.

Tahnee takes three showers, that Dana counts. Might be more. She also spends a lot of time in the bathroom but from the sounds of gagging that’s probably for the best.

That claustrophobic disjointedness hasn’t shifted. It’s nested in their guts, curling around their spines. Dana thinks of _goa’uld_ , and facehuggers, and falling facefirst into snow. The room is too hot, too loud, too bright (even with the metal shutters angled closed). Their skulls throb with a bruise on Tahnee’s forehead. A size too small—like the gauntlet. Dana wants to peel off her skin. Like maybe she’ll find metal underneath. There’s a powerful, immediate wave of longing from Tahnee then the shower starts up again.

 

 

Dana sees it through the Drift. They’re lining up to step off Kurago’s platform into Scramble Alley and

—smoke—stars—bourbon thick as kaiju blood on her tongue—

Struggling not to puke Dana pulls the plug on the drop and turns to Tahnee.

Tahnee is trying not to cry. She won’t look at Dana. She—

_Kurago? What’s going on? We’re showing some anomalous SNS firing._

When Dana asked, Tahnee said the bruise welling out of her hairline must have been from running drunk into a doorframe. She said it was nothing. Looking at it now Dana doesn’t know whether to shout, punch the console or cry.

It’s not the first time Dana has seen Tahnee’s liaisons through the Drift. It’s part and parcel of being in each other’s heads. Tahnee’s the pretty one. The social one. It’s not new to see darkened corridors, or strange bedrooms. But they’re brief. They’re fun. And they don’t mean much.

This time there’s an angry _red_ feeling around the memory and Tahnee’s fear, and pain, and _shame_ swamped Dana the moment it surfaced, drifting to the surface like an oily scum.

Tahnee might not cry but Dana does.


	3. 2017: Palau

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HA. I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS CHAPTER FOR SO LONG IT WAS ALMOST LITERALLY AT THE BOTTOM OF MY WORKS LIST.  
> '24 FEB 2015'. FFS.  
> ANYWAYS, carry on.

They can’t call off patrol without explaining, and Tahnee’s eyes as she stares at Dana from her cradle are huge behind her faceplate.

Dana says—

Twelve hours ‘til they’re home and hosed. _Momentary glitch, LOCCENT. Dingo Kurago ready to take a stroll._ Norouzi isn’t convinced.

Dana says, _“_ Norouzi, we, ah, we had a dog. Before Sydney—on our grandparents property back in WA. Kelly. Kind of our shadow. She ate poisoned bait and died in front of us. It was around about this time of year. Please disregard emotional spikes for the run of this patrol.” Every word dragged from her mouth like concrete. The part about Kelly is true: trespassers laid bait illegally on Collier land.

“Kurago, I’m reading adrenaline and norepinephrine spikes. You still seeing your dog?”

T _respassers laid bait illegally on Collier land. Trespassers—_

Tahnee buckles. Phantom pains spike down their legs and nausea surges. There are no milkmen for this run: it’s just a stock-standard escort job shadowing a container ship convoy as far as Queensland.

Dana says to Norouzi that Kelly had ears like a Fennec. Dana says she had throwback white socks, one broken tooth, and the she’d fling herself off the embankment ahead of them into the dam just to be in the water.

Dana talks shit for half an hour. Tahnee levels out.

In the things she doesn’t say: rising from the corpse and taking up their helmets and two of grandpa’s rifles. Taking the quad bike across the river and up the flats. Finding their neighbour in his shed. The gaspy glottal sound he made when they shoved their muzzles up his nose and told him that he’d better have poison for them too because if they could prove he killed Kelly, he’d better fucking _bury_ them before they buried him.

In the things she doesn’t say: Fiona sitting across from them at the kitchen table with a beer bottle between her hands. “We protect what’s ours, but we don’t get caught doing it.”

“Your principle is five kilometres west-north-west of you,” Nourozi says too-quietly. “Tracking five by five. Have a good run, Commanders.”

Dana acknowledges, then turns down the comms. All non-ambient noise in the Pod drains away in the gaps of the mechanical.

When they break off the Drift, _that_ will be there waiting for them. When they break off the drift, the monsters will not be gone. But right now Tahnee sends back the coarseness of Kelly’s ruff, and the smell of her as she rode between their arms on the quad. RABITs and rabbits. 

… … _…_

_You are thirteen, and you’re leaning on a shovel learning it’s impossible to pick dirt out of burst blisters. You already know there is nothing romantic in excavating graves under the still-savage winter sun. Two weeks ago it was Grandpa. Now it’s Kelly. There is, you’re learning, a pattern to these things._

… … _…_

 How many times does Scott Hansen die in twelve hours? How many ways does Dana find to kill him before Tahnee says—

They don’t speak for twelve hours except to check in with LOCCENT.

  _…_

They don’t tell Marshal Merriman. (Or Doctor Patel.) They don’t tell LT-Father.

Dana wants to but Tahnee points out that if they do, he’ll tear Hansen open with his bare hands. _Dana_ is going to tear him open with her bare hands.

If he does, Tahnee insists (clenching both of Dana’s hands against her sternum, both of them under one showerhead in the change-rooms) the Program will be down a pilot for Lucky Seven, down a pilot for Kelly Nomad (because even kaiju won’t let the PPDC overlook murder), and the twins will likely lose Dingo Kurago while the psych-rats poke and prod and convince themselves Tahnee is too scarred to go on.

Plenty of other candidates jostling for a Jaeger. Not to mention the stigma, the looks, the prying public…

How many ways does Dana find to kill him before Tahnee says, “They need him.”

“We don’t.”

“But we’re not the Corps.”

Dana is willing to be selfish to protect them—to cut them off from the greater needs of the Program to prevent Tahnee from being pulled to pieces.

But Tahnee’s clinging to those needs to hold herself together. Her lips peel back from her teeth but the hot rage is gone, leaving something cold and compressed. _“_ We are not the Corps,” she says. “And we need Kurago.”

They don’t tell Herc.

  _…_

Very quietly, after Tahnee puts herself down for a nap before lunch (arms around her ribs, eyes open to the wall), Dana goes and finds the archives officer who can do what she needs.

She doesn’t let herself apologise when the woman’s face falters at the phrase _corrupt the recording_.

Hackett’s son wants to get into the Academy Flight School; Dana lets her eyes flick to the photograph of him on the desk, and feels Hackett’s follow them.

Dana isn’t being fair. She doesn’t let herself apologise.

  _…_

Tahnee gets as far as lying down for her appointment with the massage therapist before the combination of towel grating her face and a hand on her back overwhelms her. Dana is on her feet by the bed with a boot still in her hand and blood pounding before she recognises what’s happening.

The therapist steps back with a stricken expression. “All right,” he says, looking from one to the other, “your CLO said you might be a little stirred up today. We can do this another time, Commander.”

Tahnee swings her legs off the table, towel clutched to her chest. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”

After he leaves, Dana locks the door behind him and Tahnee sits on the massage table and cries.

_…_

She skips dinner. Doesn’t touch the peanut butter toast Dana brought her, or the glass of Berocca beading with moisture on the desk. She doesn’t move from her bunk for six hours.

Glancing back at her, Dana eats the congealed toast with a sigh and finishes writing her report.

  _…_

Dana finds it hard to sleep. Tahnee finds it harder.

Around twenty-three hundred, she gets out of bed and opens her laptop. Eventually Dana drops off watching Tahnee type. Pieces of equations drift through Dana’s mind: resistance/ current/ entropy. An hour ago Tahnee took her second shower since debrief and now she’s drafting an assignment for her undergrad degree. She still hasn’t eaten.

How does the Collier family handle grief? Like a contaminant. A drug.

(The pathology report Tahnee very quietly had done on her blood came up with KHT17, organic psychotropic. Kaiju. _“_ Manila markers _,”_ whistles the tech in Tahnee’s memory. “The good shit _._ ” Did Tahnee have a rape kit done too?)

Dana falls asleep still in her coverall, watching Tahnee piece together a hypothesis of functionality.

She wakes when the lights go off. There’s a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that might be hunger, might be nausea. Tahnee hasn’t eaten. Tahnee can’t eat. Dana can, but there are things no hangover can transfer. The bunk sways as Tahnee rolls into bed. 

Their connection is back but it throbs. Inflamed. Infected.

Or maybe Tahnee does: her resonance is feverish and restless. The gnawing might be something foul and oily rotting at her core.

_—trespassers illegally laid bait on—_

They dream of dead dogs and blue cocktails.

  _…_

Boots rattle down the hall around three. There’s no PA alert, so they don’t get up.

_…_

Someone knocks on their door at four; drunken voices calling,

“Come out with us, Commanders! We’re going boogie-boarding—”

More voices (sober), telling the techs to shape up and get the hell off the Rangers’ level. (Is one of those voices Scott’s?)

Tahnee swings out of her bunk and goes to the bathroom. When she comes back, her breath smells like toothpaste as she crawls up and over Dana to wedge herself between twin and wall.

  _…_

 _“_ Ya can’t stay in bed all day!”

They can. But that’s Master Chief Bellic at the door, his vengeance is manifold, and he’s a contemporary of Nomad. They get up.

Beach runs until their legs warm. Tyre toss, then sledgehammer superset with sprints, sit-ups, pull-ups. Beach runs again.

This time when they takes the elevator to the mess level after showering, Tahnee looks longingly at the level of their quarters. Her hands stay tucked in her armpits.

… … _…_

_You are fourteen, and you’re nodding as your mother holds up piece after piece of machinery. “You’re nothing without the components around you,” she says. This seems like logic but it’s years before you understand what she really meant._

… … _…_

 The mess is almost empty. Almost: Scott straddles a bench, coaxing Junior into adding fruit to his muesli. Scott’s hungover – quasi-parenting Chuck through dark sunglasses – and the edge of Tahnee’s metal tray is cutting into her fingers. The stink of Scott’s aftershave clings to the air. Did he bathe in it to cover the smell of bourbon?

Tahnee gags. Dana knocks their elbows and very deliberately sets out for the far end of the mess. The table under the vents smells of cooking oil and chlorine but it doesn’t smell like danger, and the food is chalky but they refuse to faint where the Jessops, Kurago’s crew chief, and half of J-Tech might see. Tahnee still doesn’t eat until Dana swaps their trays, having already taken a bite of everything on her own.

_…_

Kaori argues Ronin’s superiority to Kurago. She’s using blueprints, pipe-cleaner models and shitty little pencil sketches on a grease-smeared notepad to do it; Dana’s almost convinced. But this is Kurago they’re talking about. So she sets aside a fuzzy yellow pin-lock and, trailing her fingers over the blueprint of Ronin spread on a J-Tech workshop table with something like reverence, demolishes the weak points of Kaori’s dissertation. Kurago’s an improvement here, here and here. Mis-stepped here.

The Jessops let Dana talk but this is a mentoring session from one Glass Bruiser to another, so not for long. Kaori’s fingers flatten paper: faster reactions if they loosen the tension _here_ (does Dana mean to note that Kaori’s nails are shorter than her own but beautifully neat?) but they run the risk of slipping gears and wearing out joints faster. Tahnee is leaning on Dana’s shoulder, tugging on her own ear as she observes.

Duc steps closer for a better look. Dana’s between them before Tahnee’s cognizant of moving ( _let me kill him_ ). Tahnee—

“Y’all right, ma’am?” Hightower is across the workshop, paused in hanking a fluid line.

“ ‘m fine.” ( _No, Na-na.)_ “Carry on.” Tahnee’s voice is unnaturally scratchy. “Sorry,” she says to Duc. “Didn’t sleep well she says. Bit jumpy. Maybe I’ll go lie down. Walk me back, Na-na?” ( _Stay with me_.)

_…_

By the time they leave the Staging Area, the gossip between two KSci labmonkeys at the next table in the mess has become news. A runner finds the Colliers at the massive door nearest Kurago’s bay, summoning them to a lesser conference room before she takes off to notify the Jessops:

In a back-corridor lab up in Alaska, an oceanographer and a marine biologist have found the Breach. Challenger Deep. The deepest, darkest place on earth. The future now is concrete as cracked ribs and the Memorial Wall: after abortive attempts to mine all deep-sea locales and disastrous consequences for marine ecology, the Corps has a target.

_…_

Sorvino looks at ease in his civvies beside the conference table but LT-Father’s every twitch has teeth. It’s been three days since the women have seen Nomad; they weren’t at the Hyatt. That, Dana remembers. There are a lot of things she doesn’t. ( _KHT17, organic psychotropic_ —)

The thought makes the twins’ stomaches roil, although they can’t be 100% sure it’s that, not Scott (sunnies pushed up on his head, squinting at the Powerpoint from the other side of the table).

Hand over her mouth, Tahnee glares at the screen. Her headspace where it touches Dana’s is redred _redKuragopanels_ and _bloodUponTheRisers_.

With the triangulation of the Breach, the eggheads have been able to study it. Some savant mathematician has already determined that the bridge is atomic—and humans know how to hit those. All they have is Gottlieb’s raw figures right now, Merriman says, but the writing’s on the wall: attack.

_…_

Dana climbs into the bottom bunk this time, thinking it’ll be easier for two of them to get in and out of than the top. She watches in confusion as Tahnee climbs to the top. There are things Dana could say, but when she reaches out, Tahnee’s presence withdraws from her like the tide receding. Sleep finds Dana confused, with a curious hollowness behind her ribs.

There’s a rustle in the darkness sometime after two. She reaches up blindly. At the edge of her range, her fingertips brush Tahnee’s. There’s a momentary pause—a freeze-up, Kelly scenting strangers. Then Tahnee’s hand retracts.

Zero for two. Unsure how to react, Dana rolls onto her back and folds her hands over her stomach. This time when she spreads her awareness to the connection, she finds Tahnee’s resonance chaotic. Her breathing is laboured and uneven.

 _‘The count of seven_ ,’ rumbles a memory. (With it come the smells of copper and propane; green notepaper; uniform pins aligned with a sliderule.) Dana breathes in and holds before exhaling. After a moment, she hears Tahnee do the same.

Not sleep, but quiet; that’s more than the last eighteen hours. They lie awake until dawn.

_…_

Dana gets the idea the same time Tahnee does. Eyelids swollen and head aching, Dana stomps on it.

Tahnee doesn’t fight her—not over the breakfast table, their crew around them and the Hansens two tables away. But the clang of their door closing is still a starting gun:

They are not suicidal, Dana says. They are better than that.  “—less than our best—”

“—don’t you **dare** throw Dad at me—”

Last night was the longest so far. Phantom pressures on limbs, hips, lungs; their veins thrumming with the blackout. Blood pounds behind Tahnee’s eyes and her fingers tingle when she remembers the lab tech saying he couldn’t suppress the test results.

How much of Scott walking out of the briefing room alive was Tahnee’s indecision between ripping his face off and never wanting to touch him again? (How many ways does Dana—)

Tahnee throws a book at the wall. Dana tosses out that Dana should’ve known (— _shoulda watched_ — _co-pilot_ — _my fault_ —) and Tahnee shouts:

Tahnee’s a grown-ass woman. Her choices. Her life. (— _not my Keeper_ — _not about you._ ) Damn if she’s going to let Dana make this about Dana. _Her_ guilt. (Rage.)

 _“_ Who was in that room?”

“Exactly! I—”

 _—am not the centre of this, can’t stand to not be the centre of this_ —

“That’s _not_ what this,” Dana snaps. “You know that. You’re in my head, you can _feel_ —”

“I don’t want to be in your head!”

Dana goes still. Tahnee’s face is flushed red the way their mother’s would and she looks _so_ much like Fiona with her face screwed up that Dana—

“Don’t you get that?” Tahnee says. She’s too worked up to sit on the bed, hands clenching and unclenching like she wants another book to throw. “Right now I don’t want anyone touching me, or near me, or—” _in me_.

Dana feels more than sees her swallow the heave.

“Jesus Christ, Na-na,” Tahnee whispers. “I just want enough space to be _me_ again.”

Dana sits, slowly, uncertainly, on the bed. “We’re Jaeger pilots,” she says at last. “Space is a luxury we ain’t got, sister.”

Tahnee’s silence rejects the attempt at levity.

There’s a knock on the door. Tahnee is still dead-eyeing Dana. She looks so much like Fiona that Dana’s throat locks up.

She goes to the door mutely, ears burning, jaw tight. Nomad, still with the stink of the streets hanging off their civvies, fill the doorway with their broad maleness and the dad-face that says _we need to talk_.

Dana looks at Tahnee. Tahnee very deliberately bends down to pick up the notebook of tidal observations she threw into the wall, and puts it back on a shelf. The twins are a unit again—only so long as the outside is more threatening.

  _…_

“Let’s go for a walk,” LT-Father says. This is how they end up on the roof of the Staging Area watching planes take off into the dusk.

From here they can see Chuck running laps on the beach of the south inlet. Up to the casuarinas, back to the collapsed seawall. He takes a slow count of seven to cross from one point to the other. Abandoned under the trees at the far end is a flat black shape on the sand that might be a boogie board.

Nomad say nothing the twins don’t already guess except this: when Krieger asks, they will volunteer.

Dana’s chewing on her tongue, stewing. It’s Tahnee who says,

 _“_ Do what you have to.”

… … _…_

 _You’re sixteen, and your boxing trainer drives the wind out of you with a rip. You grunt. When you straighten, he slaps your belly. “Wear it or get out of the way—either way, what you need is endurance. Go again_.”

… … _…_

 Fleet Week passes without a ripple.

Ronin do some photo ops. Nomad and Lucky do a kids Q&A. The twins are supposed to be there but it’s amazing how many men still cringe at the phrase ‘menstrual cramping’. A handful of photogenic personnel pose around base for a new _Enlist Now!_ campaign. The free-to-air channels keep splicing the existing adverts into footage of the festivities outside: Pons prosthetic demonstrations, kids’ art competitions, the Q &A panel: Scott balancing somebody’s three-year-old on his hip while Herc salutes a little girl in a Lucky shirt—

Dana kills the vidscreen. It’s PR smiles, or _Visit Melbourne_ ads and an editorial about vineyards on the Margaret River petitioning to stave off State of Emergency land-grabs. Dana can’t stomach seeing home.

Tahnee mumbles something that might be, “thanks. _”_

Santos drops by to see if Tahnee wants to go check out the Ferris wheel in Hyde Park; Tahnee’s hesitation tastes of frozen strawberries and deep-fried dough. (It looks like brilliant-coloured strobes and the press of a crowd.)

Tahnee’s stomach roils. She jams her earbuds back in when Santos is gone, and retreats into the podcast autopsy of Gallowtail. If she feels Dana’s longing to go, she ignores it.

After a few minutes Dana gets up and leaves. Tahnee curls into a ball, chewing her cheek.

She doesn’t uncoil when Dana returns and places a fresh mug of tea on the bed-stand beside her, but she does mutter a slightly sullen “thank you.”

_…_

Nomad never ask why the twins don’t leave base when they were both so psyched for Fleet Week beforehand. Maybe that’s why the twins dream about it:

In their sleep, they sit on either side of their mum in a carriage of a Ferris wheel at the local exhibition. They are small; she holds them tight and it’s winter: puffy scarves and her hands huge and white around theirs. Smiling, she looks down and squeezes their hands.

“Are you ready for the big drop?” She smells of golden syrup and motor oil, and her fingers are freezing.

The Ferris wheel shudders. Tilts. The carriage swings forward and down, but it isn’t a carriage: it’s the Conn and Gallowtail’s luminous eyes are swarming up toward them.

They’re in drivesuits. Now the kaiju is Rako and the interface’s voice is their mother’s:

“Ready to activate the Jaeger.” Then: “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Kurago flares to life around them as Rako claws the Conn, smiling for the cameras.

Tahnee’s breath huffs damply on Dana’s neck, nose beside her ear. Her fingers are burrowed into the dressing on Dana’s ribs, stirring up the sting, and a film of sweat stands on her skin.

Dana winces when the fingers twitch against her wound. Tahnee doesn’t move. Her breathing is arrhythmic; it slows but—

Their arms and blankets are tangled together. Dana’s free hand hangs boneless to the floor, cold from the concrete creeping up her fingers like water. Her throat clicks when she opens it to speak.

Tahnee struggles free. Knees Dana in the bladder on the way. How long since they’ve injured each other accidentally?

She’s putting on sweat pants. Sports bra. Dana thinks about getting up to follow but Tahnee pulls her boots on almost violently. Dana reaches out through the niggling _something_ that never quite went away when the Pons did.

“Don’t.”

Dana physically flinches at the ferocity of the push back.

Tahnee pulls her fingers through her hair, ill-defined in the gloom, and shakes her head as she feels for a jumper slung over the back of the desk chair. A new sensation reaches through the connection: gentler but still pushing, a sort of chivvying like herding puppies out the door.

Tahnee leaves with jumper loose in hand like a pelt. Before the thud of the door stops reverberating Dana rolls to her feet and reaches for a waterbottle to wash away the sour taste in her mouth.

_…_ _… …_

_You are Dingo and Kurago, and there are two of you._

_…_ _… …_

Tacit Ronin leave the next day. The Jessops seem less worn out by the chaos than rejuvenated, and Tahnee’s resentment of the fact is uncharacteristic.

It’s a small, sombre party on the tarmac to see off the Tokyo delegation. This is an informal flight on a Corps C130: Duc’s got a poster roll under one arm and the head of one of those tiny toy koalas that cling to curtain rods sticking out of his chest pocket. It’s wearing the red-and-gold swimming cap of the Surf Lifesavers, which Dana finds nine kinds of blackly funny. She can’t muster a smile: Tahnee skirts Duc’s personal space like it’s radioactive, and she’s a careful foot away from Dana at all times.

Kaori has less to say than Duc but it counts more:

Try those modifications. Trust their team. Don’t get complacent.

Words from a twenty-eight-year-old ex-JASDF Lieutenant to a nineteen-year-old nothing. Dana doesn’t tell Kaori she doubts complacency is a problem now.

They don’t embrace but Kaori monkey-grips their arms and Duc puts the fingerguns away for once. He doesn’t seem offended by the insincerity of their promises to swing by Osaka if they’re ever let off Merriman’s leash; his offer to host is genuine, as is his tone when he tells Tahnee he hopes she feels better soon.

She hadn’t been subtle in the hangar, but Tahnee’s shock at being so easily read still shows in her shifting weight and a twitch of her eyebrows.

Duc doesn’t say anything else. His handshake is tightly controlled.

Dana wonders how much he knows—or guesses. She isn’t reassured by how closely Kaori observes the exchange. Dana’s watching Kaori so closely that she’s taken aback when Duc holds out the poster roll.

He grins: a signed Tacit Ronin poster, he says, for which she bartered a jello shot from her navel.

Externally, Tahnee holds herself perfectly still but inside she’s writhing; her back will be stiffly straight for the rest of the day. Dana transfers the cylinder to her left hand.

It’s the last time the twins will ever see the Jessops alive in person. They snap to the salute.

_…_

Dana hits the pool solo after the delegation departs. ‘ _Don’t get complacent_.’ Is that what they’d been? Complacent?

She’s reaching to grab her towel off a poolside bench when the hair rises on her neck.

Scott only just blocks her hook. His instinctual counterpunch halts centimetres from her mouth. He grins. “Easy there, Danni. Where’s your sister?”

_…_

Dana doesn’t bother relating the incident; the skin of her arms is scrubbed raw where Scott touched her and she’s resolved never to train alone. Tahnee sits at the desk staring at her laptop. Her assignment is open, but she’s motionless. Seems to be staring into the black flashing text indicator like she might fall through it into a pinhole universe in which there is no Hyatt and no Hansens. Her mind is a blank. White noise with a sluggish pulse like—

Challenger Deep is the deepest place on Earth. The darkest. And in less than six months at least two Jaegers will be walking directly into it with the specific intention of leaving this world with a bang.

Dana puts her chlorine-smelling gear into the laundry hamper and sits down on the bed, raking fingers through wet two-inch hair. She remembers the cut. She remembers their mother’s shout and their father’s mute consideration. She remembers looking at their hair wet and limp in the sink and thinking that was that: no going back.

The Corps will ask for volunteers. At least one of those volunteers will be Scott.

There’s a slimy feeling in the twins’ guts that isn’t the mouthful of Shepherd’s Pie Tahnee managed to choke down at lunch. It feels an awful lot like temptation.

In six months two Jaegers will walk into the deepest, darkest place on Earth, and Kurago could be there beside Lucky.

_To jump? Or push?_

Dana rests her face in her hands. She stays in the close damp for a minute, counting her breaths, feeling water drip from her hair onto her fingers, listening to Tahnee’s shallow steady breathing.

Finally she raises her head. “Want me to proof your assignment?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it due today?”

A dry click of Tahnee’s throat. “Yes.”

Dana straightens through the burn in her shoulders that says she’ll be paying for her slackness in warming down tomorrow and stands. “Give it to me; I’ll ask Capaldi to take a look.”

_…_

There are Fleet Week photographs. The PR liaison gives the twins a set and a stern ‘ _think about what you’ve done’_ Look.

When the Colliers spread the photos on the desk in Kurago’s office, they understand why. Here’s Herc with Marshal Pentecost; Uncle Wal laughing with General Munroe. And there’s Dana touching tongues with Kaori Jessop.

Tahnee picks up another: herself on the couch with Scott, both of them slit-eyed with laughter and holding a Gallowtail.

She pulls a metal bin out from under the desk and one of Santos’ cigarette lighters from her pocket, then leans on her knees to watch the photo burn.

_…_

They pass the Kwoon door on the way back to quarters and pause at the muffled twack of _hanbo_ striking mat. Junior and the Japanese girl who flew in with Pentecost are sparring. Tokyo’s Daughter and one of Sydney’s favoured sons. But this is less katas than bloodhunt. There’s a lot of that going around lately.

The twins avoid Herc because he’s kind but he smiles the Hansen smile.

They avoid _Chuck_ because sometimes what emerges from his mouth is so purely Scott that Tahnee wants to crush his throat.

Yesterday, Dana caught the impulse by the skin of her teeth and dragged Tahnee away by the wrist. Tahnee hadn’t calmed down until they were back in their quarters halfway through a game of checkers, the tune of _Blood Upon The Risers_ buzzing through her ribs. And Dana had wondered again if she was right to do this—stonewall Tahnee’s coping.

Tahnee had thrown the board against the wall.

Mori has the advantage: “Your footwork is bad,” she says, her voice less piping than Dana remembers from the brief interviews with Sunrise Australia and Nine News. Older Mori still has Coyote Tango barrettes in her hair but her sweat speckles the mat and one cheek is colourful with bruising.

“It is not!”

“It is.” In one smooth move, she scoops his ankle with her _hanbo_ and dumps him on his arse.

Junior scowls up from the ground. That expression, at least, is all his own. Cussing Mori out, he hooks her ankle with his own. No katas now. Brawling.

Dana feels a laugh bubble in the depths of Tahnee’s chest. It disperses before reaching her mouth. She’s walking on before Dana registers her moving away.

  _…_

LT-Father catches Dana outside the women’s bathroom following Thursday morning Kwoon time. “Snowpea, where’s Sweetpea?”

Dana looks instinctually back into the bathroom. Showering? Crying? Scrubbing her skin raw because her sparring partner wore the same aftershave as Scott?

“Changing.”

_…_ _… …_

_You are seven and there’s a dead rabbit on the kitchen table in front of you. “Well, go on,” Grandpa says to your twin, holding out the knife. “You know what you’re doing.”_

_Your twin hands the knife to you._

_…_ _… …_

Over three hundred personnel make up Kurago’s dedicated crew. Today they sit (Dana sits) with some of their reactor crew for lunch, largely French with a few Swiss, Americans, and Italians thrown in for good measure. The varied languages make no difference: the techs uniformly discuss the media backlash from the Great Breach Reveal. Between Kaori Jessop’s finally-complete analysis, Gottlieb’s breakthrough, and the planned attack, shouldn’t the PPDC be dialing back the patrols? How expensive is petrol now, with the Jaegers taking top priority worldwide? Why isn’t the PPDC delivering on the transparency promised in 2013?

Tahnee shoves her food away uneaten.

  _…_

In the cold hours of morning with a cup of overbrewed tea growing skin beside her, Dana scans an online treatise entitled ‘ _Psychological First Aid’_ for anything she can use.

  _…_

“You know, you walk slower these days,” LT-Father comments on the way to Motorpool. Sorvino and Tahnee are ahead of them, shooting the breeze. Tahnee’s light smile suggests it’s trivial. (The glint in Sorvino’s eye suggests it’s calculated, to force the twins apart, or even just get her talking. He’s a sneaky fuck like that sometimes.) Dana looks sidelong at her father.

“You and Tahnee,” he clarifies. “You walk slower. And this is the first time we’ve been able to pry you apart in a week.”

Sneaky fucks. Plural.

Dana considers. He’s right: they have a new pattern. When they walk, they walk together: Tahnee on the left, Dana the right, shoulder to shoulder. Kurago’s decal on their deltoids turned out like pauldrons.

It’s the Jaeger, she realises. Walking the Jaeger, feeling invincible that way, has become a default. They need it. Like a security blanket. Like armour.

Every step is a little longer, a little slower, than normal but it mimics the feel of walking Kurago and that triggers feelings of security. Now he’s pointed it out, Dana can’t help but notice it. She can’t fault Tahnee for wanting to be invulnerable more of the time than they are.

_…_

At the K-12 school they’re visiting, they let Nomad take the lead in the auditorium even when most of the questions are directed at themselves. When they split, Nomad take the high school classes. Somebody, somewhere, thinks that the twins are better suited to the younger grades. Dana has thoughts about that, but Tahnee—

Tahne sits at a little desk with her knees at her ribs, letting herself be mobbed by six-year-olds. They want to touch her Ranger tab, poke her dimple, borrow her fingers to apply temporary tattoos of Kurago’s decal…

The next child is a boy who looks enough like Chuckles to be a Hansen. Tahnee stills. Bashfully, the boy holds out a decal and turns his head to the side. Instead of the tattoo, she stares at his cheek, his throat.

Dana’s pen lifts from the PPDC placard she’s supposed to be signing. About to stand up and intervene, she sags when Tahnee grips the boy’s chin and dips the tattoo into the water dish.

  _…_

“I could have slapped him,” Tahnee says as they’re driven back to base.

“But you didn’t.”

Discretion or no, the driver is listening. The look Tahnee gives Dana is mutely expressive: the kid wasn’t even a Hansen.

Dana doesn’t have anything to say to that.

Tahnee turns her gaze out the car window to where snatches of the Sydney XZ barrier are visible as they drive. She seems disappointed, but Dana can’t say why.

_…_

Tahnee doesn’t let it slip out in the Drift anymore but it’s still there. Dana can almost smell it festering.

_…_

Dana takes up Kurago’s on-base PR to cover Tahnee’s atypical reservation. She leaves Tahnee in their room sleeping off a headache (unwilling to hover and incur Tahnee’s wrath a second time in the day). This is how she winds up in the mess arguing with one of the ground crew over a game of checkers.

She won. He disagrees. She says no-limit on Queens, he tells her it’s three. Too damn _convenient_ for Dana’s tastes. She eyes the board and wonders if she can make him eat the stacks he’s claiming are illegal.

One of the maint-techs shakes his head and tells her to _scooch up, grasshopper_. New game. They’re going to play Dominion now, and he’s going to show her how to _properly_ whip the smug salt who’s just taken her afternoon off-base pass. This tech is wiry, with a thin mouth and kind eyes. His name stripe reads _R._ _Stahl_.

The new game looks like Go but plays out on a digital board hovering above an emitter. One solid chip per side to claim their colour. Maybe she’ll need the help: the ‘smug salt’ is Nomad’s assistant crew chief. His grin at her new teammate’s challenge is somewhere between toothpaste advert and Trespasser.

Another engineer takes up beside him. Dana’s co-player smiles at her as the three men set up a battered-looking board.

 _“_ Stahl,” he says, offering her a large, callused hand. “Ground crew, Kelly Nomad.”

She opens her mouth but his grin says he already knows.

Stahl laughs. “Face like a bucket o’ smashed crabs, that is. Don’t let it getcha down, grasshopper: the way ya dads talk about ya, we’d have t’ be deaf and blind not to know who ya are _._ ”

Suddenly she feels watched—pinned under glass like an insect. Her legs tense to stand.

“Not runnin’, are ya, Ranger?” inquires Nomad’s ACC. He’s grinning in a way that makes her want to knock his teeth in.

“Jesus, mate,” says Stahl. “Let her go if she wants.”

Dana looks at him with numb surprise, torn between the kneejerk of standing up for herself and the relief of letting someone else do the legwork.

His sidelong glance and grin are impish. _Got your back, boss_ , they say.

Dana levels her stare at Nomad’s ACC. “Make your play.”

_…_

Stahl has an easy way of being with the other techs that makes Dana wonder if this is what having a brother is like. If this is what ‘friends’ are like. She’s almost forgotten what it is to relate to someone she doesn’t share a skin with.

After they win easily, Stahl tells her that he and a few others always train in the boxing gym at 4pm on Mondays and Thursdays; he could use a tactical eye in his corner. (If her co-pilot doesn’t mind sharing.)

Dana tells him he can have a tactical _fist_ ; she’s not one to stand by and watch.

Stahl grins in a lazy, toothy way that makes her think of dingoes lolling in the sun. “Wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  _…_

A bulletin goes out: the higher-ups are conferring. Some time, very soon, the call to arms will come. The K-Sci is already making moves to install deep-water sensors closer to the Breach to improve early-warning systems. Tahnee, flat on her back on a lifting bench so she doesn’t have to meet Dana’s eyes, nods at the ceiling as Krittiga tells her this.

Dana returns her weights to the rack to pretend she wasn’t trying for eye contact and scrutinises her sister’s training partner instead. Tahnee refused Dana as a spotter; tapped a friend from PR in her place—one of the handful of people Tahnee has willingly interacted with since the Hyatt. Dana can tell the slim Ensign isn’t capable of lifting the weight Tahnee is pushing.

Krittiga turns talk to predictive models put forward for anticipating kaiju. The numbers don’t match for geometric progression, she says. Tahnee grunts.

Doing their joint routine solo means Dana’s finished way ahead of schedule. She could throw in the towel. But the gym is empty except for the three of them (by Tahnee’s design) and if Dana leaves, it’s just Krittiga.

Towel over her shoulder, Dana eyes the plates Tahnee has stacked on her bar and then climbs onto the spinbike.

  _…_

“Ya hear the found a whale off Guam?” Stahl calls over the whirr of the hydraulic pump five storeys above their heads. Dana shakes her head, concentrating on the ISO reading of the fluid emerging from Nomad’s lines as directed. “Half of one, anyway.”

“Yeah, I read that,” says another tech, this one an Aboriginal woman. Jill, Dana thinks her name is. (Pert nose, mischievous grin.) “Summat like half the tail missing, yeah?”

“Yeah, and buggered if the eggheads could find it.” Stahl snorts. “Dunno how’re they spos’ta work out if it’s kaiju adapting to Earth’s biome or jus’ some old whale that carked it if they can’t even find the whole bloody thing.”

Dana peeks out from the cavity of Nomad’s heel to offer ‘ _Guess, like always’_ and finds Tahnee, arms akimbo. Two steps behind, Krittiga adjusts her hairpins.

Tahnee’s face is hard—LT-Father’s when the twins returned to bury Kelly. She has to shout to be heard over the pump. “Patel wants to see us.”

_…_

Patel doesn’t know anything. She suspects – or has an inkling – but she can’t say what of. They leave with recommendations to see more of their father, and get some sleep. As though either is possible.

_…_

_I’m sorry._ Dana projects it into the Drift as hard as she can.

Tahnee’s fist tightens on her control matrix until her glove pinches but she doesn’t respond. Her side of the Drift remains dark and sluggish, and the Jaeger pulls right for the whole patrol.

Oh-four-hundred, sees them back in the Kennel. Despite carrying twelve hours of fatigue and knotted muscles, Dana is pulled aside by a bevy of analysts and mechanics. Nobody sleeps until they find a problem they can fix.

Tahnee showers off only the worse of the transmission goop before beelining back to quarters.

  _…_

Herc sits down opposite Dana in the mess carrying a steaming mug and nothing else. This is not a work call.

Dana drums a fingernail on the side of her own mug. It’s before dawn, between shift changes; the early crowd are few and disinterested. Nomad is on patrol. There’s no one to buffer her.

“Haven’t seen much of your sister lately.” He says it off-hand after commenting on progress in Challenger Deep, new ordinance, new meal options. Like he can tell the twins apart. Like Rangers flying solo is less noteworthy than beef Rogan Josh with actual kick. Dana doesn’t know if that makes him another sneaky fuck like Nomad, or clueless. His expression is guileless but he also gets along like a house on fire with Marshal Pentecost.

“She’s dealing with some things,” Dana says mildly.

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

As a heart attack. “No, nothing serious, Sir.”

That earns a self-deprecating smile. “I’m not ya dad or ya supervising officer, Ranger.”

But he is a Hansen. A distinct pang of regret accompanies the thought. Dana quashes it. If he’s drifted with Scott, then he probably knows, and if he knows and is still acting normal then he doesn’t care.

Working her jaw loose, she takes a measured sip of tea. “I know.”

He’s studying her when she glances up, like a new battle sim or a blueprint of which he can’t see the whole. “Y’ know that if you’ve got questions… or if you’re havin’ trouble with someone… y’ can talk to us.”

 _Us._ Him and the rapist.

The laughter in Dana’s throat is hysterical. She funnels it into her mother’s thinnest smile. “Isn’t that what the ombudsman’s for?”

“Some things can’t be talked out,” Herc says with a grimace.

It’s Dana’s turn to study him. He doesn’t look the slightest bit discomfited by the scrutiny. Is he talking about his brother or his son? Maybe neither.

“Noted,” she says blandly. “But we’ve got it under control. If you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the hay. Last night was a long one.”

  _…_

Scott grabs her arm as she passes him on the way out. “Ay, Danni! Where’s ya sister? Thought we might all cruise down to the shopping centre and catch a movie. The squirt wants to see that animated one. With the samurai.”

He stinks of aftershave. Dana does not punch him. “We had patrol.”

“So sleep at the movies.”

“You have patrol.”

“Yeah, but not ‘til like six.” He cocks his head and squints, too-sharp too-bright smile fading just a little. “Am I sensing some resistance to my company, gorgeous? It’s just a bit of fun between colleagues, y’ know. Figured it’d be good t’ get Chuck outta the Dome for a bit before end-of-term testing.” He pulls that face that means she’s supposed to be sympathetic to a Good Uncle.

“Raincheck,” she says.

_…_

Tahnee’s skimming notes from the last Pan Pacific symposium, bare feet on the desk. For the first time since the Hyatt, she’s painted her toenails: pastel green. “The Kuroshio Current stuffs them up,” she declares without looking up. “We always assumed they got straight for the nearest landmass, but what if they don’t? ”

“K-Sci will tell us when we need to know.”

“Rangers need to know.” She glares at Dana for refusing to play along.

Dana’s spent twelve straight hours trying to be in sync with her sister; it’s beyond her capacity to give a damn. She shuts the metal louvers with a snap. “Rangers need to sleep. Kill the light, I’m going to bed.”

  _…_

When Tahnee dreams about it, Dana dreams about it.

It’s not a sharp pain: it’s smothering. It’s raw throats and crushed lungs and an oozing, nameless fear they haven’t felt since they were six years old. It’s wet sheets and not trusting their muscles to save them. Tahnee doesn’t look at Dana as she bundles up her bedding and hoists it out the door for the afternoon laundry intake. Dana sits cross-legged in the top bunk and considers.

When they were six – scared that neither of their parents would return from deployment – they told Grandma and she taught them how to clean, load, and aim a twenty-two calibre rifle. Grandpa showed them how to clean the rabbits they brought down; Mum – when she did come back – showed them how to lift their bodies out of the dirt and endure. How to fix things when they broke. Their father showed them how to navigate by the stars when the sun was gone, and that singing _Blood Upon The Risers_ would give them a beat to keep time with when everything else was uncertain.

Colliers are bold and strong and they stand up for themselves and for each other. But Tahnee isn’t six anymore. She’s nineteen and she _hurts,_ and Dana – strong as she is – doesn’t know how to fix that. As Kurago, they’re two megatonnes of invincible. As Tahnee and Dana, they weren’t enough.

Tahnee slaps Dana in the face with a focus mitt for thinking this. Tahnee pretends for the people sparring around them in the gym that it was a training jab, but Dana sees the anger. Her cheek stings. She opens her mouth to apologise.

Tahnee throws the mitt to the mat and storms out. She doesn’t want apologies. She wants to break things.

  _…_ _… …_

_You are fourteen and your first real boyfriend called you a slut in front of the entire green belt cadre. Your twin does the logical thing. She breaks the fingers he’s using to demonstrate._

_LT-Father suspects it was deliberate; your mother knows it was. She brings ginger beer when she comes, homebrew, made specially for the upcoming base Open Day and still tart. “All right,” she says. “Spill.”_

_…_ _… …_

At oh-eight-hundred, a handful of people assemble in a briefing room.

At the other end of the world, scientists have been preparing data for the Breach assault. The greatest frontier. Krieger wants to hit it with a nuke.

There’s a stunned silence in the briefing room.

There are ways, Sorvino begins to say, to generate energetic destruction without pumping radiation into the already-struggling oceans—

“They’ve been tried.” Merriman clicks the projector through slides and slides of analyses from the 2016 attempts.

Six Rangers, the heads of K-Sci, J-Tech, and others Dana doesn’t know sit in silence attempting to digest this. Tahnee doodles on her notepad.

Marshal Merriman is not merry—but he looks savagely happier than they’ve ever seen him.

“Sir,” says Scott, “when the mission is a go, we’d like Lucky to be there.”

Herc looks at him like he’s sprouted three new heads that speak Kalahari Bushman. Tahnee lays down her pen and considers the drawing she’s made of jagged gash that might be the Breach. Her mind is a wash of black and bright blue, shot through with red.

_…_

There’s a memo waiting on the home screen of Kurago’s office computer when they arrive, an amber icon blinking between maintenance reports, requisitions, and weather forecasts.

Tahnee flicks it to her tablet, puts her boots up, and reads it several times like she doesn’t already have it memorised.

_…_

Bo waves from a mishmash of staffers when the twins enter a Rec Room at random. Tahnee hesitates but her ghost heart jumps; she rocks closer to Dana even as her hand lifts to wave back.

As Bo resumes his seat , Tahnee looks to Dana as if seeking confirmation that they’re going over. She seems unbalanced by Dana’s lack of interest: no _they_ if she moves to join the table, just _Tahnee_. Her uncertainty is a quiver between Dana’s lungs. She wants Dana to go with her, but Dana—

Dana is angry. She’s too busy replaying LT-Father’s calm nobility as he offered Nomad’s lives to the Breach to be gentle on her sister.

Tahnee’s face has hardened by the time Dana realises Tahnee is waiting on her. “I’ll be in ours with Niew,” Tahnee says flatly. “We might go up the cove for dinner, if you’re not too busy with your new playmates.”

She walks away before Dana can apologise. An arm loops around Dana’s shoulders.

She narrowly avoids cracking Stahl’s rib.

“All righty,” he wheezes, raising both hands. “No sudden grabs. Gotcha. Anyway, Commander Sorvino asked me to pass along that the transfers from the other Domes arrive today, and that there’s a news team cruising around prying into Venator. In completely unrelated news, we’re moving onto the hydraulics in Kurago’s other leg, far from rubbernecking range. Care to join?”

Behind him are several techs she’s beginning to know by face, all watching with varying levels of curiosity. She glances after Tahnee.

Tahnee is leaning over Bo’s shoulder to shake hands with a new acquaintance, her smile smooth and rehearsed.

“Sure,” Dana says to Stahl. “Yoda me.”

  _…_

She’s in the hangar when her heart starts to race.

Tahnee is not with her. Tahnee is with Krittiga in the twins’ quarters. Tahnee is in vetted company, a known location, safe, and yet—

Dana puts a hand to her chest.

Stahl, hanging from a harness beside the catwalk, bangs a gummed-up coupling on the rail. “Oi, grasshopper. Collier. _Commander._ ”

Her eyes flick to him. Before she can articulate what’s happening, her chest tightens and her eyes begin to sting.

She starts running.

_…_

Krittiga is blocking a man from entering the Colliers’ quarters. Dana doesn’t look higher than his shoulders.

He grunts when he hits the floor. Between the adrenaline, the _huk-huk-huk_ of Tahnee’s machine-gun breathing, and Krittiga’s shellshocked expression, Dana doesn’t give a good goddamn if he’s hurt.

He starts up. She goes at him again before her rational brain kicks in.

Bo knocks the kick aside and scrambles back against the steps of the opposite room. Dana freezes.

The Haitian rises cautiously, favouring one leg. “I’m sorry,” he says with both hands up. “I don’t know what happened. She was fine, and then— _”_

Dana’s breathing begins to slow. Bo. Bo is not a threat. She blinks. She’s shaking all over and lights dance in her vision. “It’s fine _,”_ she says muzzily. “Did I hurt you?”

He touches his leg. _“_ No _._ Dan—Commander, I just wanted to talk to her.”

“I believe you.” Dana’s arms are metal and ten tonnes too heavy.  “I’ll come by later, okay? We’ll talk. About this. But later.”

He leaves with good grace. The limp goes with him.

Krittiga’s talking but she’s still blocking the doorway. Beyond her, Tahnee spins circles trying to pace and curl up and shake off phantom hands all at once.

“—just stepped out to get more tea,” Krittiga flutters, “and—oof!” 

Tahnee backs away when Dana approaches.

“We all came back here after lunch,” Krittiga offers weakly as she peels herself off the doorway. “Bo asked for a minute alone… She said it was fine.”

Tahnee is pulling her hair, rubbing her arms like they’re crawling with ants.

“You didn’t have to shove me,” mutters Krittiga. “If you asked me to move, I’d—”

Tahnee’s laptop is open on the desk.

“—I was only gone a few—”

The blankets on the bottom bunk are rumpled.

“—should I—”

 Krittiga can’t be here for what happens next.

“Get out,” says Dana.

“Should I—”

 _“_ No. Just leave.” She takes Krittiga’s jumper from the back of the chair and thrusts it into Krittiga’s arms. “You wanted me to ask you? This is me asking.” The door clunks as it shuts and locks behind her.

Tahnee lashes out when Dana touches her—not even play fighting, just sloppy: all slaps and shoves and keening shrieks.

Dana grunts when she’s knocked into the bunk frame. “It’s me! Tahn, it’s just me.”

Tahnee lets out an inhuman wail and throws Dana’s hand off her shoulder. Retreating to the empty corner by the door, she shrinks down into a ball and pulls all her limbs in to her chest.

Dana crouches opposite her. Head down, Tahnee presses back like she’ll merge with the concrete. Become stiff and stable. Become Kurago.

Dana eases herself down cross-legged. Tears and clear mucus roll down Tahnee’s cheeks and chin. Her gaze fixes on a single point on the floor.

Dana sits out of kicking range with her forehead cradled in one palm. She is so out of her depth. Among the papers scattered between desk and bunk is a cartoonish drawing of a chubby Kurago holding a sunflower; Dana can’t imagine Tahnee drawing it (or having the skill), so it must have been Krittiga. Tahnee’s heartbeat echoes in Dana’s chest, running like wild dogs, and through the Drift Dana feels stubble scrape her skin.

Who does she turn to? Who can help without knowing everything?

Tahnee makes a strangled sound. Closing her eyes, she starts to rock. Dana watches her with one eye open.

 _Tahnee,_ she hears, like waves crashing on shore and all of a sudden the weight in her chest feels like drowning. _Tahnee_ …

Stubble scrapes her cheek, the quilt is rough beneath her, and all she tastes is _redredred_ —

Tahnee turns her head and vomits onto the floor.

_…_

Dana resumes her tailor’s seat by the foot of the bunks after cleaning up as best she can without leaving the room. Tahnee kept her head turned away the whole time. Every so often a shudder wracked her. As Dana sat down again, Tahnee began to rock. Her exhalations take on a rhythm. It’s just a recitation at first but gradually…

Eyes still shut, she sings to herself. Dana can feel the lyrics in her throat. They reverberate in the empty place where an ache pulls like the sucking of the sea.

It hits her what’s missing when Tahnee reaches the third verse: she wants their mother.

Tahnee’s mute chorals catch. She resumes audibly.

“Honey,” Dana murmurs. “Honey, I don’t know how to help you.”

Tahnee’s eyes pinch. She returns to the beginning, forehead grating on concrete.

Dana watches for a few bars and then lets her head drop back against the bedframe. “G _lory, glory,”_ she chimes, _“what a hell of a way to die. With a rifle strapped to his back, now he’s falling through the sky_ —”

_…_

Tahnee isn’t there when Dana wakes. She’d fallen asleep at the end of the bed with _Blood Upon The Risers_ still in her mouth. Painfully, she unfolds herself from the floor.

The night shift are trooping into the Staging Area when she finds Tahnee on the roof. Her co-pilot sits beside the iris facing the sea, legs dangling off the walkway and a cigarette between her fingers. The smoke that coils up at Dana as she slings her legs under the railing smells like tobacco and marijuana together; Bo doesn’t partake, so that’s his co-pilot’s work.

She wonders if the women talked or if Tahnee simply went to Santos because Santos had the goods.

Tahnee doesn’t clarify. Indifferent to her co-pilot, she takes a long draw on the joint and lets it out slowly. The evening wind brings with it the acrid smells of burning jet fuel and Kaiju Blue neutralizer. Dana wrinkles her nose. An evening chill cuts through her coveralls and puts goosebumps all over her but she stays put.

Out at sea, a convoy of container ships are a string of red and yellow lights in the dark. Beyond these, nothing delineates sea from sky. They’re seamless: one smooth, black curve. It feels to Dana like the twins sit at the wall of a great glass globe, being shaken about so someone can watch the storm.

Tahnee snorts. “We’ve got action figures. Snow-globes, though…” She takes a pull on the joint. “That’d be something.”

“We’d make a badass snow-globe.”

“The baddest.”

They watch the ships until all three pass from view.

“It might help,” Dana begins, “if you just talk—”

“Dana.” Tahnee flicks the butt into space and swings to her feet. “Just shut the hell up about it.”

_…_

Bo opens the door to his shared quarters with a beatific smile. Handing Dana a mug of chai tea, he directs her to the squishy couch in the sitting room. His limp is gone. Dana makes some comment about the room – the salvaged couch, the photos of Haiti – that makes him smile, but later she can’t remember later what it was. The tea burns her lips.

“So,” he says. “Tahnee.” So: the other day.

Dana spins the mug in her hands. The tea is heavy with cardamom, cinnamon, touched with anise. All things harder to find now. It’s expensive, this peace offering.

She begins by telling him that she is here only because Tahnee cares for him. In the Drift… well.

Bo doesn’t blush at all and his gaze remains steady; his is a mind that has seen worse and not bowed. She raises her estimation of him a notch.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket before she can move to point number two. She draws it out with a feeling like premonition.

_Whatever you’re doing, don’t._

Dana regards the screen mutely. The mug begins to burn her fingers. Absently, she settles it on her thigh.

Bo looks on with frank compassion. “Tahnee?” he says mildly.

A follow-up message buzzes: _I can feel your guilt._

Dana sets the mug down on the table between a stack of dominoes and a wooden fish with _Santos_ carved into the fin. “I’m sorry.”

Bo sighs. “Me too.” He opens the front door for her without comment. As Dana passes the threshold, though, two fingers touch her arm. “Tell her I said so?”

_…_

The first of the sensors K-Sci managed to install in Challenger Deep goes offline shortly before six PM local time. The rest are dark by eight.

By the time Dana bows out of meet-and-greeting the new transfers, it’s all over the base: there’s something down there. Jill and Stahl walk Dana out of the Rec Room she’s been corralled into for an hour.

“Guess you saw this,” Stahl says, showing Dana his phone.

She barely skims the title: _UN Officials in Discussions with PPDC Over Roster For Breach Assault_. “We muster at eleven hundred tomorrow. All-‘dome teleconference.”

Stahl rocks back on his heels, sucking in his cheeks. “Fuck me,” he says softly.

“Maybe if y’ ask real nice,” Jill teases, and sticks her tongue out when he grins.

_…_

Challenger Deep is the deepest place on earth. The darkest. Tahnee is cross-legged in the bottom bunk watching submarine footage from before the war with a mug of tea cold in her hands when Dana returns. She already knows.

Mutely, Dana strips down to her t-shirt and re-boils the kettle.

Tahnee surrenders her mug for a fresh one without protest and allows Dana to crawl in beside her. They watch re-runs of _Sea Patrol_ until the casual references to refugees, the reef, water poisoning, start to get to them. On a different channel, the nine o’clock news bites are on: the breakdown of a month-long armistice in Gaza, extremists in Karachi, a drug bust in Pakse, advances in Jaeger-tech prosthetic limbs, the latest antics of Ranger Scott Han—

Tahnee switches the TV to a random radio channel and gets up. She brushes her teeth perfunctorily, strips off her outer layers, and then climbs to Dana’s bunk. She pretends to go to sleep but Dana can feel her awake for a long time.

In the meantime Dana watches the screen. Amoebic colours pulsate in time with easy-listening jazz: blue-black marbled with gold. It reminds her of the aftermath of Hundun. It reminds her of Gallowtail.

_…_

Tahnee gets up in the middle of the night with red behind her teeth. Bra, trackies, boots go on like armour. This time Dana gets up too.

The Kwoon is empty this time of night, white lights harsh like an operating room. Fitting for the vivisections Tahnee performs on herself: pins herself apart in membranes of bad memories, bad tastes, bad impulses. Searching for an answer. A diagnosis.

Why didn’t she disable him and leave the room?

Tahnee frowns at Dana, two sets of Escrima sticks in her hands. Neither is sure whose thought that was.

  _…_

Dana walks off the mat bruised. Tahnee doesn’t: Dana can’t land a hit on her.

“Don’t,” Tahnee says flatly, “fuck with my shit again. I’ll sort Bo out when I’m ready.”

Dana touches the swelling warmth at the corner of her mouth. “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

_…_

An encrypted teleconference assembles every active pilot team and Marshal in closed conference rooms across the Pacific at eighteen hundred HK time. Dana lingers on every face on the split screens as everyone takes their seats and the reception kinks are ironed out. The Wei triplets are broader than she remembers and only superficially at ease: Hu scribbles, Jin spins a mechanical pencil into a blur. Diablo Intercept are look drawn despite their brassy tans; with their Jaeger still off-line, they’re fulltime chorus boys, riding the media shockwaves of Scarada. Duc and Kaori (Dana feels her face heat and fights not to drop her gaze) speak quietly with their Marshal. Marshal Pentecost’s implacable calm on the Icebox screen is offset by the Beckets bouncing at the edge of frame.

General Krieger takes pride of place in Hong Kong, Marshal Bae to his right. He clears his throat. Eight rooms settle like millponds.

They’re green-lit, he announces. In a month’s time, three Jaegers will descend into Hell.

 _A_ month. Not five. Chaos reigns.

Dana tries to absorb that but her mind resists. Again, she scans the twenty-odd Ranger pairs. Who isn’t coming back?

_…_

Kelly Nomad volunteer. Dingo Kurago don’t. Tahnee stares insolently at Dana over breakfast. A friend Tahnee hasn’t seen since the Academy is treated to one of Tahnee’s waxy new 1000-watt smiles when she stops by and they leave together to ogle photos of the nearly-complete Crimson Typhoon.

Sorvino tugs the end of his moustache, watching them leave. “Want to tell me what that was about, chickadee?” he says to Dana.

It’s not really a question so she doesn’t answer.

He attempts to Dad Stare her into spilling. Dana looks to her actual father. Derek continues mechanically eating like he didn’t just stand forth and declare his intention to heroically blow himself up for Corps and country.

Sorvino clears his throat.

Dana raises both eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“All right, if you won’t tell me about that, tell me about this.” He reaches for her bruised eye.

If one doesn’t look closely, he and her father appear nearly identical: same posture, same musculature, same touch of grey at the temples. And yet they’re not interchangeable.

Dana evades his hand and excuses herself.

 … … _…_

_You are eighteen and nobody at the Academy can tell you apart. You tuck your tags and let them struggle, smiling when they stumble on your name._

… … _…_

 Sorvino’s on a vidcall when they arrive for Game Night. Dana leans over his shoulder to compliment his son-in-law on Grandbaby #1’s black curls while Tahnee hooks a pack of cards from a cupboard. Sorvino’s ex-wife and daughters still live in Darwin – anti-ADF, anti-Corps – and these days Dana can’t fault them for refusing the east coast, but…

Yindi burbles against Patrick’s shoulder. Dana wonders if Sorvino will be dead before he has the chance to hold her.

“Nice welt there, cuz,” says Pat. “They let everybody beat on girls, or you beating on each other?”

Dana prides herself on getting the catch down to a fraction of a second before she responds. “No pain, no gain. Good seeing you, Pat. G’night, gorgeous.”

Yindi giggles.

Tahnee doesn’t protest Dana taking up her tea as she curls up in the chair opposite Tahnee to watch her shuffle the cards. One joker out. Two. This pack is a souvenir from Tasmania, not PPDC-issue; Tassie wildlife on the face and the island on the back. Dana remembers that family trip: the stink of penguin guano in a rookery, reading Aussie Bites in the car, a lavender farm, a restaurant on a boat. Even though it was anchored, they all sat on tall chairs on the back deck and watched the fishing fleet come in at dusk, drinking fresh-made ginger ale.

Wading in nostalgia, Dana glances over her shoulder. LT-Father scratches his ear as he squints at a laptop on a desk mirroring Sorvino’s. Sorvino is asking Pat about the retaining wall at the back of the house. Neither have said any more about the Breach. The yield needed to collapse an inter-dimensional bridge, the potential for kaiju booby-traps…

How deep does the bitterness in Sorvino’s family run that he’s willing to get himself killed before he holds his grandchild? What does it mean that he’s more of a role model than the twins’ father?

“Dad,” says Dana.

“Mm.”

“Dad,” Tahnee repeats flatly.

LT-Father turns off his tablet and rises with a stretch. “You remember this?” he asks Tahnee, taking up a joker. He turns the Tasmanian Devil to the light. “You were convinced you were getting seasick on that boat with the restaurant, so we didn’t even eat, we just drank ginger beer. Couldn’t get you to eat anything but apple slices and lavender lollies all the next day. Snowpea, no problem. But you, Sweetpea—” He bends down and kisses her hair. “—absolute menace.”

“No, I don’t remember.”

  _…_

Five Rangers, a kid, and PR disaster walk into a conference room. There’s a punchline, but Dana’s not sure what it is.

The Boomsday Roster, as it’s dubbed, lists three Jaegers: Puma Real, retrofitted T90 Rubicon Gambit, and to carry the payload: Horizon Brave. Not Kelly Nomad. Not Lucky Seven.

“I mean it’s bullshit, isn’t it,” Scott declares, slapping the table. His Academy ring clicks on the plastic. “Panama’s not even _close_ t’ the Breach! They just want to show off their shiny new toy. And Krieger’s gonna let ‘em.”

Officially, the six of them are waiting for a PR monkey to instruct them how to Not Talk About Operation Vindler With Civilians. Unofficially, Chuckles is here because Vindler Isn’t Happening, and Chuck is Known To Inopportunely Run His Mouth.

“Stealin’ our bloody thunder, is what it is,” says Scott. Herc ignores him. The twins calculate how hard they’d have to hit Scott with the water carafe for it to crack. (Tahnee calculates.)

“It’s bloody _dumb_ ,” Chuck pipes up, slapping the table in miniature of Scott. “The Ruskies aren’t even as close as _we_ are!” He has taken to mimicking his uncle’s speech. Everything is ‘bloody’. (Only because he can’t get away with ‘fucking’ yet).

Herc is discussing cattle drives with Sorvino. LT-Father chimes in instead.

“We’re the about same distance, kiddo,” he says to Chuck.

Chuck replies with an eloquent sneer. “Yeah, but we’ve got all Indonesia an’ PNG.” ( _We_.) “And Lucky’s faster than any of those clunkers run by them or the Chinks—”

“ _Beg yer pardon?_ ” Herc’s voice is a thunder crack. “What was that last bit?”

They’ve never seen Chuck quail before.

It’s not from desire to defend him that Tahnee stirs. “He’s right.”

Herc looks at her like she’s a BuenaKai in a kayak blockading Sydney Harbour.

She picks dead skin from a cuticle. “It should be us.”

Puma Real was added to the roster when the PPDC realised they might need an interceptor, the eponymous Diablo still up on blocks and the Mark-IIIs incomplete. But she won’t be enough.

“We’re too small,” says Dana. She isn’t sure whom she’s trying to convince.

Herc looks like he wants to get back to disciplining his son but doesn’t know how to begin, so he lets it slide. Quiet curdles around them until the advisor arrives.

_…_

The Boomsday Roster lists three Jaegers: Puma Real, Rubicon Gambit, and Horizon Brave. Not Lucky Seven. Not Dingo Kurago. Five Rangers, a kid, and PR mess walk into a conference room to discuss who will be descending into Hell, and Dana’s not sure what the punchline is. Possibly the fact that The Rapist is not on the roster while the endearing Tätobta cousins are is its own joke.

_…_

Unable to muster the will to do anything she needs to, Dana kicks off her boots and climbs to her bunk, bag and all. She wakes to find Tahnee glaring, eyes black, head haloed by the holoscreen.

“Get up.” Her hair is wet and she’s wearing her work-out gear.

Dana sits up and runs a hand over her face. Her head is pounding, eyes gritty. (How long since they slept the whole night?)

“You want to help?” says Tahnee. “Get. Up.”

  _…_

Tahnee rolls an Escrima stick in her hands before laying it aside. “I thought,” she says roughly, “it would be fine.”

The sway of her shoulders as she walks the racks of weapons is Dana’s own, familiar as breathing—everything except the blot of her decal. That’s on her left arm, the wrong arm. The lines of it pucker at one point of the shield over a chicken-pox scar. Two handspans over on her back is the knotted white line where she opened her back on scrap metal swimming in a friend’s dam.

Tahnee bypasses the weapons and moves to the gloves. In the mirror, as she goes, Dana can see the nick on her jaw from when they tried shaving with Grandpa’s straight-razor. It matches one on Dana where she tripped in the garage while her mother was working on a Subaru Legacy, and opened her chin on the engine well.

Tahnee turns with two sets grappling gloves. Dana catches the set she’s thrown.

This is her sister. Her co-pilot, yes. But her sister.

 _Say it with me, Na-na_ , Tahnee teased at the Academy (three more reps; one more set; four days until Drift-testing): _Raaaaaanger_. _We’re gonna be badass together._

Dana steps onto the mat tightening the wrist straps. “Tell me,” she says as they settle into Form One, “what happened with Bo.”

She’s on her back in an armbar with Tahnee’s thigh wedged under her chin before Tahnee speaks.

“He came by just before Niew left.” Tahnee’s tone is flat.

“Niew?”

“Krittiga. All he wanted was to talk. We sat on the bed. He went to kiss me on the cheek before he left, and…”

The sweat on Dana’s face is slippery cold. Her neck prickles.

“He didn’t _do,_ ” Tahnee says hollowly, “a goddamn thing.” Her grip goes slack.

Dana slithers free and sits up without resistance.

Tahnee stays where she is, flat on her back staring up at the lights with pupils shrunk to pinpricks. “I can’t kiss someone I trust with my life.”

She lies there unmoving with sweat glistening like glass and breathing mechanically deep and regular. A facsimile of a Ranger, an automaton.

Dana stretches out beside her. Limb by limb, she aligns herself until they lie parallel. There’s an acrid, dusty taste at the back of her throat like talcum and bourbon, and Tahnee’s presence in the drift is so wrung out and thin it’s barely there.

“I’ve looked at the numbers,” says Tahnee. She lets out two measured breaths: in for seven, out for seven. The glare of the lights overhead puts red circles in Dana’s vision that flash gold when she blinks. “That pattern the mathematician harped on about at the last symposium. There’ll be a kaiju attack soon. Even if we’re not deployed, we’re not gonna make it through this war if we don’t toughen up.” Her laugh is short. It crackles like a bushfire. “ _Blood Upon The Risers_ , right?”

If Dana keeps her eyes closed, the circles are only gold. “Blood Upon The Risers.”

“Na-na?” Tahnee rocks her head against her sister’s. Her eyes are bleak with rage. “I’m so fucking sick of this.”

_…_

Breath tickles Dana’s arm in the grey light before the alarm. She wakes with Tahnee’s face pressed to her stomach. Like Tahnee could crawl inside her and hide there.

At least the echoing feeling of Tahnee’s bones reinforcing her own is back.

Dana extricates herself without disturbing her twin. On the way to start the kettle, she pauses by The Map and, after a moment’s consideration, adds a black pin to Sydney.

  _…_

Tahnee won’t be coaxed into the Sunday Eighties-Music Room-Cleaning Dance Party Dana launches after morning duties, but she sings along from her perch in the bunks and obligingly throws dirty socks into the hamper as she exracts them from between mattresses and wall.

  _…_

“I’ve noticed you cover your tattoos lately,” says Doctor Patel.

They pointedly don’t look at each other.

“That seems,” Patel continues, “odd. I was under the impression that you were very proud of them. In fact, I was told that only yesterday that you refused to show some you encountered on the beach. Why is that?”

“It’s winter,” says Tahnee. “It was blowing a gale.”

She does not say, _We only have one personality anyway_. _What does it matter?_ Nobody notices that Dana scratches her left ear now, and smiles when men flirt. Nobody notices that Tahnee doesn’t eat until Dana does, or that she’s never alone.

It’s only Tahnee’s new vigour for training that draws attention. Only that and the kill counter on Kurago’s chest. (How many Rangers call and write to congratulate them on that? Who answers the calls? Dana—but does it matter, if they are interchangeable?)

“I understand,” says Patel, “that the two of you have experienced some changes since your engagement in New Zealand. In your personal relationship.”

“Combat bonding,” says Dana.

“Is that what you believe this is?”

“It’s what we were told at the Academy.”

“A hundred hours in the sim can’t do what twenty minutes in battle does,” says Tahnee. Her tone is not quite a challenge.

Patel regards her levelly and makes a note on her pad.

Combat bonding. Perfectly normal progression. Nobody’s concerned.

“I merely ask because you seem to have undergone quite a… noticeable deepening of your connection. Dana, you mentioned earlier that you sometimes taste what Tahnee is eating. That’s quite a subtle thing to transfer through the ghost-drift, wouldn’t you say?”

“We’re twins.”

“Mm. Yet it’s interesting that you’re experiencing these changes now after having quite a close relationship all your lives, as you note. And Tahnee, your attitude to training… Master Chief Bellic reports that you’ve always been dedicated, but lately…” Patel trails off. “What about your father? Neither of you have mentioned your feelings on Kelly Nomad volunteering for the Breach assault.”

“They’re doing what they need to,” says Dana.

“—we’ll do what we need to,” says Tahnee. “This isn’t really any different to when our parents were in the Air Force.”

Patel isn’t going to bring up their mother so late in the session. She also hasn’t made any motion towards discussing Scott. Tahnee’s skin still crawls.

So when Patel says eventually, “Is there anything else that might have contributed to these changes?”

Dana thinks, _red_ , Hansen, _stop please_ , vanilla and cedar, and bourbon burning thick their tongue—

And Tahnee says, “Just Gallowtail.”

  _…_

“She knows we’re lying,” Dana murmurs as they enter the lift.

“Does she? Or do you want her to.” Tahnee’s tone is hard. She hits the button harder.

Dana doesn’t have an answer. “I think we should go visit Priya and B when we get back,” she says instead as the doors close.

“Yeah, okay. Shoot ‘em an email and see when they’re around.”

  _…_

Tahnee only sleeps by pressing her back to Dana’s front and wrapping Dana’s arms around herself like strapping into a drivesuit. She’ll only listen to old school rock and jazz; no eighties, no blues. But in the Kwoon, she’s better than ever.

Operation Vindler is a Wednesday. So, naturally, the trouble begins the day before. (To be strict, it begins the day before that. To be stricter: three months before that.)

From a wide view, it begins the day LT Prosper Ignace Beauregard smiles at two Rangers in a seaside café and then stumbles over which he ought to address. More directly, it begins in a wasteland that used to be Manly, and peaks on a sofa in Bo’s quarters.

“Fucking Tuesdays,” says Dana as she accepts her helmet.

Three Jaegers await a Breach alert in Guam. Last minute change of plans: the payload will now be delivered by remote-controlled submarine, with the Jaegers running perimeter. Good news for bean counters worried about Jaegers getting caught in the blast; bad news for Jaeger pilots. A wider net means bigger gaps, and an incompletely-bombed kaiju is a pissed-off kaiju. Colloquially, it’s known as ‘Going SanFran’.

Tahnee and Dana suit up for a combat readiness eval sim in Sydney while Kurago steams up the east coast ahead of them on the back of an aircraft carrier bound for Palau. While Horizon, Puma, and Gambit standby in Guam, the rest of the fleet filters out to remote battlestations. This plan calls for the highest concentration of Jaegers on duty at a single time ever—and the thinnest dispersal: high value assest granted a Jaeger bodyguard range from Taipei to the Valdez oil port and the PPDC hospital on Hawai’i. Kurago’s Palau oceanographic monitoring station is an unlikely target but a lynchpin of the early warning system and centre-stage of Nomad and Lucky’s placements in Brisbane and Tacloban.

In Kurago’s office this morning, Tahnee traced a vector between them on the plastic globe on her desk while Dana re-read the mission dossier. How long would it take Kurago to reach either from Palau? How many times does Scott Hansen die in—

They farewelled Nomad on the airstrip last night; saluted the Hansens from a distance. And this morning, before their own flight to Palau, they strap in for the six-hour sim eval.

At Hour Three of _stopstartwalkrunjump,_ Tahnee gets cranky. Hour Five, Dana does.

The XZ wall is grey and artificially featureless to the west. Every footfall on land carries them over the hyper-realistic wreckage of million-dollar houses like bones. In other places, areas like this have become shantytowns, collective slums clinging to the past like limpets, radioactive in the night.

Not here. The simulated sun rising blinds them as they perch on an inlet awaiting commands. Tahnee turns her head to the west. If Dana tries very hard, she can imagine it’s only because of the glare, and not because Tahnee is looking at the wall, imagining what it must be like to have gone up in smoke and escaped before the world became complicated.

Tahnee resents her complications. She wonders what it must be like to be a ghost.

“Lighter,” says Dana. Tahnee looks across the vast chasm of the Conn with flat eyes. Manly is gone. Only ghosts remain.

Nourouzi hawk-eyes them for signs of uncharacteristic temper. Dana wants to snap at her that in their condition, everything is temper. They’re hot, tired, transmission gel squishes in their armpits and under their breasts, and every step carries them over skeletons. But Nourozi suspects.

So instead of snapping, they dive. Bodies running, they sink. They swim through syrupy summer days under a clacking ceiling fan, math tests, and strong lights over the boxing ring, to Kelly perched on the quadbike between their arms.

The rider – she, her, they – rips over the flats with Kelly between their elbows, grimy goggles strapped tightly over their nose. Loose dirt and gravel spurt up behind them. A rifle thumps against their back and Kelly’s mouth opens wide to let her tongue flap in the wind. The sun – strong, high, fiercer than in Sydney – turns the grasslands around them to silver and fires the sky to glass. This is the day the twins tied for first in a Muay Thai competition. One of them is at home reliving the fight for their mother. One of them is ripping across the flats. Their bodies thrum with victory.

There are no kaiju. There is no Scott.

There is no Dana, no Tahnee. They are just a girl on a quadbike, aching legs and iron heart and free.

When they emerge from the Pod, they stagger in unison.

The lead suit tech whistles unenvyingly. “Yeah, ghosting this one’s gonna be a _bitch_.”

They find their way to Bo’s quarters blindly still thrumming with the roar of the engine. It’s the last night before the mobile unit deploys to Palau and from then who knows how long before they’re home. Until there’s a kaiju, or an explosion, they suppose.

Of course, there’s a party. Of course, things get wild. This is the end of the world, after all. Jill and Stahl meet them at the door, happy to escape the rooms full of people they’ve already fleeced elsewhere. They are unpenitent sharks and tonight the blood in the water is Air Squadron’s. Bo warns them not to pick a fight with Santos’ many cousins but lets them loose.

Tahnee has issues with strangers. Tahnee has issues with men. Tahnee has issues with alcohol, but with enough of it she can ignore the first two. Bourbon is out, but scotch is familiar ( _wrists-legs-forearms sticking to the metal of the kitchen table and a voice on the radio saying_ ‘ _early this morning in Jaya—‘_ ). Both twins take a healthy swig . Then another. Tahnee sits with her legs over Bo’s lap and smiles when he laughes.

Inevitably, Tahnee begins to fail. Exhaustion and alcohol and stress weigh her down; Bo holds her closer.

Inevitably, Santos returns from the party in her cousins’ quarters and finds the one in her own winding down. Jill at her heels like a retriever. Hazily, Dana thinks that’s a mark in Santos’ favour; Jill doesn’t normally go for women.

Tahnee is exhausted: worn thin by strangers and brittle at the edges of her sleep-deprivation. Dana is not. Or is, but less: she still hangs in the Drift, hovering in the dry and dust and the stink of burning petrol, Kelly bouncing between her knees. Santos and Jill half-carry Tahnee back to bed; Bo puts on a jazz mix, and chuckles when Dana accused him of trying to put her to sleep.

“Always the same thing with you two,” he rumbles.

He is warm and wears the same aftershave as a friend at the Academy. His opinions on fighter jets are problematic. He has two piercings in one ear and a morse code scar on his collar bone that wasn’t Morse code until his cousin told him that since he was already cut up from jumping the handlebars of his pushbike, he might as well make it look tough.

Dana and Tahnee are interchangeable. Tahnee has issues with alcohol, with strangers, with men. Dana does not.

It’s only the memories that make them who they are. Tahnee has issues with men, and in her nightmares she sinks beneath them and drowns.

Bo is warm and solid and wears the same aftershave as a friend at the Academy, and when she kisses him, the room dissolves and reforms in lines of sunlight. She floats above the flats, the grasslands silver and the sky above her a perfect glassy blue. She is a girl, a Jaeger, a puff of cloud. She is infinite.

Santos drags her off the couch to her feet and punches her so hard the room goes fuzzy.

_…  
_

Tahee reads it in Bo’s face as he stands on their threshold at oh-five-forty with Dana’s t-shirt in hand. She slaps him so hard her handprint goes pale, and half-asleep Dana thinks that Tahnee and Santos are so alike they should Drift test.

Then what’s happening actually sinks in. She sits up scratching sleep from her eyes and trying to soothe the fuzzy pounding in her heart like her skull has its own heartbeat.

“Ta—”

“You,” Tahnee says simply, fully dressed and with patrol cap in one hand and the door held open in the other, “can carry the fucking bags.”

That she manages to slam a forty-kilo steel door behind her is an achievement in itself.

When they climb into the shuttle for their hotel in Koror, it’s still the only thing she has said to Dana all day.

_…  
_

Officially, no one knows what Operation Vindler is. Unofficially, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that a Jaeger deploying to a Pacific Island absent kaiju activity is a Big Damn Red Flag. Journalists show up almost before the Colliers have checked in. How much is there really happening on an island with a post-kaiju population smaller than an Australian country town?

While the Kurago’s PR rep wrangles the media, Tahnee camps in a sun chair on their room’s veranda to follow the progress of an unmanned sub positioning temporary sensors around the Breach. She’s mentally preparing herself up for the Welcome Ceremony tomorrow, Dana knows. The sensor web is a viable distraction; it’s as important to Vindler as the Strike Team and payload.

“All three in place and transmitting,” Tahnee reports out of habit. The tensing of her shoulders says she caught her error as soon as she made it, so Dana keeps reading the hotel pamphlet without response.  

_…_

The plan is to bolt the explosive into position beneath the Breach and remotely detonate it next time a kaiju begins to emerge. Alarms trigger thirty-two hours achead of schedule.

Only the Guam team is prepared, and no one was expecting an actual confrontation. In under thirty minutes, the payload team is wheels-up. The rest scramble for their stations.

Mercifully, it’s twenty minutes to six Palau-time when the bells drop. The Colliers break off dressing to meet the islands’ council and run for the Jeep that pulls up in front of the lobby.

The last international flight has long since departed to clear the runways for Kurago and her mobile staging unit. It sounds more impressive than it is: several glorified shipping containers comprise the unit, with interior fittings for purpose. In one of these, the twins submit to suit techs blearily grumbling about the unit’s stripped-down facilities while other personnel set up a makeshift field camp: shade tents and a basic kitchen and mess, huge tanks of water and generator fuel haphazardly deplaned and stacked everywhere like Lego bricks. The unit planned for a multi-week wait; this chop-and-change has thrown everyone. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be.

The cooks grumble as the wind blows their gear around; the Troopers grumble about humidity in their kevlar; the suit techs grumble as they slather the twins in transmission gel and help them into their undersuits. Neither Ranger is in the mood to perk anyone up. Despite the tropical surroundings, sunshine, and lulling _shush_ of waves not two hundred metres away, the atmosphere is tense and sullen.

Undersuits dangling to the waist like shed skin, the Rangers flop into plastic chairs in half-prepped mess to await orders. A radio on the table between them sputters occasionally with exchanges from other units.

Tahnee spins a mug of steaming tea without apparent intention to drink it. Dana flips pages of the tourist guide.

“It wasn’t intentional,” she says out of the blue.

 “I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

“Just let y’ dad hear you cussing like a blackthumb, my girl,” teases their crew chief, entering just in time to catch the last. “He’ll—”

Tahnee dead-eyes her.

Chief Technician Wagoire is not a timid woman: only a little older than their mother, with a wide, leathery face and short-cropped black hair, she has weathered harsher storms than the ire of a stroppy half-dressed soldier. But she goes quiet at something she sees in Tahnee’s face.

Mouth drawing tight, she reports brusquely on progress fixing a glitch in Electrical, and withdraws. The radio screeches. Tahnee turns it up.

At eight AM, Wednesday June 21st, 2017, three Jaegers arrive at a cliff in Challenger Deep overlooking the site of the Breach, armed with a thermonuclear warhead and as much warning on what to expect as the collective scientific community could muster.

It does not go well.

  _…_

Chief sticks her head back into the tent as the radio goes quiet. She finds the twins dark-faced and already on their feet.

“We’re up, Commanders,” she says with grim good humour. “Time to get your war face on.”

_…_

Tahnee shies away when Bo’s living room blooms in her mind. It’s not the reaction Dana expects at all.

It’s also something they’ll have to deal with _later_ : presently, at the same time Kurago is spinning up, Puma Real is being hurled across the bottom of Challenger Deep by a kaiju that not a single sensors detected, that did not come through the Breach. The kaiju were waiting.  

The twins don’t quail at the realisation the humans have been anticipated. The sensation isn’t sudden and sick; it’s leaden. It’s a sinking, slow weight in every muscle. The kaiju were waiting.

The kaiju are getting smart.

Almost without a thought, at the same time they’d strapped into their motion arms Tahnee had opened the piggyback channel Jill had installed on Kurago’s comms to let them listen in on other teams. Audio washes into Kurago’s Conn like an ill tide.

It’s not like dreaming each other’s nightmares in the Pons, or in the ghost-Drift. They have never before been so intimate with another team in the process of being ripped apart.

Three Jaegers dropped. Three Jaegers descended, approached the deposit site, prepared for delivery—two bodies on sentry duty, one shadowing the sub.

Gambit’s screaming as they are cut down trying to intercept the kaiju that streaks toward Puma burrows through the Colliers to their marrow. The sudden halt of it followed by a silence and static engulfs their bodies in ice.

The Tätobtas shouts filter dimly through it, overlaid with the machine-gun exchanges of LOCCENT trying to raise Puma, Horizon, Kurago Kurago _Kurago are you listening, finish your damn warm-ups and get into position!_

Rustily, they shake themselves free of the horror. Three Jaegers dropped into the Breach. A kaiju was waiting for them. Had been for some time.

Horizon takes down that one, but another emerging from the Breach is what set off the alarms in the first place. The Strike Team was down and out by the time he comes through. As Kurago steps into the sea, he is streaking west—to Guam, to the Philippines, to them… Who knows.

The twins consider:

Puma Reál, not fast enough. Ripped apart like an action figure.

Horizon: silent on the comms. Status unknown.

Gambit: haemorrhaging air. Filled with water; her pilots floating dead in her belly on the umbilicals of their control arms.

There is no Breach, Horizon reported on the comms. No permanent target. Only a blackened rock and a zone of heightened, alien energy. A kaiju waiting for them.

There is no Breach, but there is a kaiju inbound. Odds are very good that the twins are going to die bleeding in the surf like their mother.

There is no Breach, but the kaiju is coming, and when Dana kissed Bo she had really, genuinely had forgotten that she and Tahnee are not interchangeable and all sheTahneethey wanted was to feel whole again.

Tahnee is making up her mind. Conjoined but separate, Dana considers:

A Category-III. Two kaiju, no Breach, and three Jaegers dead in the water.

She doesn’t want to die feeling alone.

She feels more than sees the wetness on Tahnee’s cheeks; when she looks over at her sister, Tahnee’s jaw is set but her eyes are wet and the line of her eyebrows is their father’s.

“Na-na,” says Tahnee. For the first time since before the Hyatt, the Drift is full and bright and hyper-saturated with the presence of both pilots. “You fucked up. But we’ll deal with that later. You’ll keep.”

The phrase is so much of their grandfather—of their mother, of home, of standing on the gantry seeing at Kurago for the first time and of Sundays at the dam that Dana’s thinks her heart might burst.

“Let’s go Ripley on the bastard,” Tahnee says.

They will not go down alone. They are Dingo and Kurago and if they’re going, they’re going together—and they’re taking that kaiju with them.

_… … …_

_You were born reaching out for each other. You will die the same way._

_… … …  
_

When LOCCENT finally gets a lock on him, Onikuma has changed course—maybe in response to the Navy encircling Guam, maybe for arcane logic of his own. The vector he’s taking toward the Philippines now will bring him within spitting distance of Palau.

Dingo Kurago is tasked with clearing the waters around her islands and holding the line until a striker can get there. She is, after all, only an interceptor. A watch-dog.

“ _Can’t really expect these cute lil pups to take on a kaiju on their own, can ya?”_ Scott says to a journalist in their memory, and Tahnee’s reaction is a snarl so vicious it would put Kelly to shame.

“Boat inbound,” Dana reports at they round a coral cay. “Green thirty five. Sound the horn.”

The twenty-footer steaming toward the island on their left doesn’t slow. Tahnee checks the EOD for a name. The boat is a bath-toy from their vantage, ripe for squeezing,

“ _Sunny Daye,”_ Tahnee hails through an open channel (two months ago she would have smiled). “—this is Jaeger Dingo Kurago. There is a kaiju inbound. Repeat, kaiju inbound. Alter course and head for the next nearest port.”

No change. Then, belatedly, the vessel slows. A redheaded man in khaki shorts appears on deck.

Tahnee’s built up too much of a head of steam to be thrown by his hair, or build, or the fact that from a distance he could be—

Her stomach roils. She pushes through it and keys the loud-speaker. The man gestures to his radio antenna as she repeats the warning at volume. His tiny thumbs-up is nearly invisible even at maximum magnification. Dana murmurs something about ninety-nine problems too lowly for LOCCENT to catch.

Tahnee shuts off the speakers, checks the air and water intakes, rechecks kaiju tracking. She doesn’t want to joke. Doesn’t want to talk. She’s ready to fight and every minute this kaiju takes to get here is another minute her restless energy builds. She didn’t want to save that man but she’s resisting unbidden memories of both the Hyatt and of Dana and Bo, and it’s making her antsy.

“Let’s get this done,” she grates. “Norouzi! How long until intercept?”

“Thirty minutes, Commander.” Norouzi sounds tinny with distance. “But Lu—”

Tahnee tunes her out. Deliberately, she dredges up memories of swimming in the dam with Kelly, of ocean currents, of a marine science documentary they saw when they were kids, and churns everything into a mess in which she can submerge herself. There’s nothing of her left on the surface but a wash of calculations and flickers of pink/yellow/blue.

Dana goes down with her, recalling in the tastes of syrup and rainwater, and the smell of engine oil on their mother’s skin as she smoothed their hair to say goodnight. Thirty minutes to intercept.

...

Onikuma arrives before the cavalry does.

“—is on the way and Shaolin Rogue’s close behind, Commanders,” Norouzi trills, “but she’s coming from Taipei so it’s going to be—”

Neither twin is sure who acknowledges, only that one of them does. They focus on Onikuma’s vast ursine bulk plunging after them without clear recognition of anything beyond it.

Another wild swipe has them skidding under it with bent knees, oblivious to coral underfoot, before ducking away again—always letting him get just close enough that he doesn’t get bored and go for the towns. Their armour is already pocked and smoking from sprays of blood where they cut him to keep him interested.

“Bring him in again,” Tahnee grunts. “We need to—”

They’re closing on an hour of engagement but he’s starting to twig that they’re only delaying him. Trumpeting defiance, he turns to Koror.

They don’t have a plan when they run straight at him. Electricity arcs down the Sting Blades just as the edge makes contact with the tendons of his knees. This is the fault that Electrical was trying to sort out; the Blade works fine but the Sting part is…

Onikuma whips around as they slide. A solid strike to the abdomen lifts Kurago clear of the water. She’s flung several hundred feet to splash down in the channel. They are only so small and he is the largest Category-III so far.

Onikuma drops his head and bellows.

Laughter filters through the vox as if from the bottom of a well as they lie stunned. “ _Are ya planning t’ fight the ugly bugger or dance with ‘im_?”

Scott’s cackling on the radio is all Tahnee needs. She surges up out of her fugue like a Greek Fury. Kurago crawls out of the channel on hands and knees, both pilots with gritted teeth. It’s hard to breathe through the clenching under their ribs, and their very skin is stinging from the feedback of kaiju blood burning through Kurago’s armour, but Scott’s laugh rattles in their ears. The Drift runs red.

They launch themselves straight at Onikuma. He takes the bait.

Coral crunching under their knees, they glide right beneath his outstretched arms and angle a Sting Blade through a primary forearm like butter.

They don’t anticipate the follow-through from his other primary. It makes contact not, as they would have expected, in the back of the head: but directly at the base of their spine.  Pain eclipses the Drift in a flash of white light.

They have forgotten how to move. They are dead. They will lie here while he stomps on the Conn, fills it with water, leaves them to drown.  

Sand fills the visor, white and fine and spread with coral knolls. Glass crunches as Kurago’s weight pushes her down onto them. Cracks splinter across their eyes.

Is this the last thing their mother saw?

A voice cracks through the vox: “ _Get up_.”

 _No shit._ Neither twin is sure where that hazy rejoinder originates. It feels like both of them.

They can’t get up. They can barely roll over.

“Ku—g—u—OW!”

They heave against the two-megatonne weight of themselves and flop onto their back just as Onikuma buries his fist in the sandbar. His great ursine head blocks out the sun. Water drips onto their helmets through the cracked visor. They get an up-close view of double rows of teeth and a trifurcated tongue as he swings to the Conn and opens wide.

Instinctually, they throw up their forearms. Upright plates on their vambraces drive deep into his skull.

He rears away with a scream. Kurago locks her shoulders and resists. Two of his six eyes stay behind on her spines.

Part blinded, part enraged, he pigroots in circles with a screech that makes their inner ears ache. Kurago rolls onto her knees. Blue blood burns as it streams down their arms with the seawater.

“ _Oh ho,_ what _?!”_ someone shouts appreciatively on the comms. “ _Did you fucking_ see th _—_ ”

“Hold on, Kurago,” interrupts another voice: measured, terse. “We’re coming to you.”

Dana can’t give either voice enough attention to be relieved; Tahnee rejects both outright. Her side of the Drift darkens like tunnel-vision briefly and then she pulls it back. Baring their teeth behind their faceplates, they surge to their feet without replying. They are on the defensive now.

Onikuma rounds on them, his face pitted and ruined. He’s committed to Dingo Kurago now. They are no longer an annoyance: they are a threat.

The twins take stock. They’ve lost the thermo-electric circuits in one Stinger but they’re still breathing. With a spurt of speed, they break for a nearby islet. Onikuma gives chase.

...

Onikuma’s diminished sight keeps them alive for three hours. Kurago is light but her motion rig is heavy and stiff: their muscles are screaming by the time a speck on the horizon blooms into a Jaeger. Kurago is limping—but so is Onikuma: one forepaw and a whole secondary arm cauterised into stumps. He keeps trying to put weight on it and stumbling. Not so smart after all.

Kurago squares off against him as he turns toward the sound of choppers.

“We’ve got you in sight, Kurago,” comes that second voice, sure and strong. “We’re coming to get you. Just hold on.”

Red floods the Drift again. Their knuckles ache.

They have been doing so well on their own.

Tahnee’s teeth are bared. Sweat drips from her chin. “We don’t need you—”

“—to come and get us,” Dana cuts in smoothly, as smoothly as she can without breath. “But if you could just distract the bugger while we sort out our blade malfunction t’ chin the fucker, that’d be great.”

Laughter from both men. A language warning from LOCCENT. Dana’s pretty sure Tahnee flips off interior camera, but Dana’s watching Lucky’s silhouette grow bigger against the sun and whatever Marshal Merriman says in response goes over her head.

“Lucky Seven, dropping in!”

Kurago settles on her haunches to re-centre while Onikuma turns to the new threat with a cornered animal’s rage. Dana’s trying to get her breath back; Tahnee is…

There’s a moment in the ensuing battle when Lucky Seven presents her back wholly to Kurago while grappling with the kaiju. Dana senses the intent – the questioning, analysis, integration – that goes rapid-fire through Tahnee’s mind. They’re barely an arm-length behind Lucky; if they deploy their functional blade directly through the back of the Conn—

Kurago actually shudders with the sudden divergence of alignment.

With an effort, they stagger and catch her. Dana still can’t stop the look of horror and surprise she shoots at Tahnee.

“Kurago,” chirrups Norouzi, the first time Dana has been conscious of her since Lucky dropped, “hold onto it! You’re so close.”

With a grunt, Tahnee tenses, swings her arms down and out to deploy their remaining blade. Dana ghosts without thinking. For an instant they hang suspended in intent.

If Tahnee chooses to kill Scott now, they’re deep enough in the Drift that Dana will follow without thought. How many ways does Scott di—

Something flashes between them, too quick for Dana to comprehend. They lunge.

The Stinger bites deeply as Kurago launches past the combatants and blue spurts from Onikuma’s leg. He kicks back. Kurago goes backward over a reef with the top of one thigh caved in. Onikuma is forced to abandon the damaged primary leg. Blood pours from the crease of his knee as he drops.

He goes down just as a bow-wave slaps Kurago’s back to announce the arrival of Shaolin Rogue. The twins painfully lever themselves upright in the surf to prevent any perforated compartments flooding, but are satisfied to watch the less banged-up Jaegers finish the fight.

With her opponent offering less resistance, Lucky frees a hand to punch him repeatedly in the head. Shaolin politely waits for Lucky to finish pulping Onikuma’s skull before she puts a plasma blast neatly through the back of his neck.

The twins drag themselves to the nearest landmass and lay as much of the Jaeger above the waterline as they can before disengaging.

Norouzi says something congratulatory as they unhook, then someone else does, then a third party is asking for an environmental assessment, but the twins are dog-tired.

“Commanders?” Norouzi says as Dana clambers from the hatch onto Kurago’s skull.

This time Dana musters a curious, “ _hmm_?”

“I just thought you might like to know: Jumphawks are flying what they managed to retrieve of Horizon Brave back to Hong Kong, and four of six Rangers in Challenger Deep have been recovered.”

Dana drags a gloved hand through her dripping hair. “Copy that. Good to hear. Thanks, Norouzi. If y’ don’t mind, now, we’re going to… uh… check out for a bit.” She can hear the slur in her own voice. Tahnee has given up, sitting on the rim of the hatch with her head propped on her forearms above it. Dana reaches down. “Tell Lucky and Shaolin thanks for the help.”

“I’ll pass that along,” says Norouzi. “Retrieval helo’s already spinning up.”

“Copy. Colliers out,” Dana slurs, and then pulls out her earbud.

On the sun- and battle-warmed metal above Kurago’s cracked visor, they let themselves collapse.

...

Dana loses track of how many people thump them fraternally as they stagger out of the chopper to the ambulance. She’s not even sure if the other Rangers were in the same Hawk; her vision is blurry and post-adrenaline nausea is royally kicking in. She hasn’t been this haggard since Hell Week at the Academy.

Tahnee isn’t better off: her face already attached to an emesis bag, a saline drip in her arm.

Hazily, Dana fixates on a woman approaching.

She has a confidant swagger and a familiar sweet, sardonic smile. She’s… “How many, Ranger?”

She’s not their mother; she’s just a doctor, an Islander, holding up several fingers and asking Dana to focus.

“Yellow,” says Dana, just to be a pest.

“Possible concussion. Okay, let’s get them inside.”

...

When they’re released back to the hotel the next day, Tahnee drops onto her bed and sleeps until Dana shakes her awake at sundown.

There’s a tradition, and they have yet to thank the other Rangers. It’s not like it’s black-tie – old jeans and T-shirt are all Dana bothers with – but Tahnee’s barely awake and reluctant for other reasons than fatigue, so Dana showers and goes ahead.

Herc arrives in the hotel bar before Tahnee does. His expression is one of pleasant surprise. “Evenin’. Thought maybe ye’d dropped of the face o’ the Earth after that effort yesta’day. We saw you at the hospital but you were pretty out of it. Just wanted to congratulate ya. Those were some fair moves you put on that big bastard.”

Dana anticipated this but it still takes her a second to switch gears and engage something between Civil and Social. “Thank you, Si— ” Herc grins, eyebrows rising; Dana ducks her head with face warming. “Thanks.”

“No wuccas. And I mean it: I’ve seen old-timers couldn’t hold their own like you pair. That was good work out there.”

Now she knows she’s blushing: heat spreads down the back of her neck like a sunburn. At the back of her mind, she feels Tahnee smirking.

“That means a lot…” She avoids addressing him because ‘Herc’ feels too familiar and ‘Hansen’ feels like a dry heave. He offers a hand to shake with no trace of suspicion. His palm is warm and dry on hers, callused like her father’s.

Tahnee enters from the lobby as they separate. When he repeats both congratulations and proffered hand, she accepts them without batting an eyelid. She turns to greet Shaolin Rogue without showing a hint of the turmoil Dana feels inside her.

...

Shaolin fly out before twenty-hundred: no sense staying to party when they didn’t really do anything to earn it, they say with self-deprecating mildness. Dana goes to see them off, unsure about leaving Tahnee with the Hansens in their corner of the lounge but unwilling to make a scene.

From the bottom of her lowball, Tahnee doesn’t seem concerned.

Dana returns just in time for all of the lights in the hotel to go out. Power outage, the bartender explains apologetically as she lights candles from a box under the bar. More common since the kaiju. _And_ since (she doesn’t say) the PPDC started leeching power from the grid for clean-up operations.

Dana returns awkwardly to the Rangers’ little knot of lounges with a complimentary bottle of whiskey. “Blackout means an open bar.”

“Sweet.” Tahnee leans forward with her empty glass. “Fill ‘er up.”

Scott laughs and reached for a refill of his own. “That’s the spirit!”

For once Tahnee’s expression shows plainly that she’s contemplating breaking his nose. Likewise novel is the troubled look Herc gives her in response.

...

Before the bartender leaves to check on her family, she fills the bar with so many candles the twins are reminded of the time they went with Javi to midnight mass. Then, the Koadiak church was lit up like a stalacmite cave. Now, shadows drip like honey from the walls and the couches float in a sea of syrupy black. The other guests trickle away; the novelty of meeting Rangers is somewhat diminished by the blackout. Even Jaeger Rangers fresh off a kill only have so much appeal when there’s no running water.

So: four Rangers sit alone in a bar, drinking.

Four Rangers lounge on deep wicker sofas surrounded by a hundred candles, working their way through a bottle of twelve-year Scotch, and Tahnee thinks that if she put her feet on the table neither man would stop her. She stretches across Dana’s lap instead.

There’s only so much reminiscing they can do about they dead. They have already poured out for the fallen, for the reef, for Shaolin missing an open bar. The men are talking shit about football. Dana’s talking shit about them for being caricatures of themselves. All three are talking shit about Queensland.

Tahnee lets the talk wash over her. Sips her scotch. Counts candles.

Dana’s hand is heavy on her shin like a greave; Dana’s body shakes with laughter. She is reminding Herc he still owes her technicians for the wager he ‘didn’t take’ on the outcome of State of Origin, the four of them are swimming in shadows, and the scotch is peaty and burning in Tahnee’s mouth in a way that takes her back past the Hyatt to a metal table and a radio saying, _Late this morning in Jayapura_ —

Over and over, she hears the crack of glass as coral pushes into their visor. Over and over, pain blossoms as Onikuma punches them at the base of the spine and forces them face-first into the sand.

Colliers are not suicidal. But Tahnee still wonders: how quickly it was over for their mother? Did it hurt?

There’s no infirmary here. No Patel, no monitors. What there is instead:

Four Rangers in a bar. Ninety-two candles. Half a bottle of Scotch. Two dead kaiju. One rapist. One apologist.

Tahnee is drinking, and loose-limbed with exhaustion. Tahnee is drinking, and cruel.

When there’s a lull in conversation, she asks Herc Hansen what he thinks it was like for his wife to go up in sparks like a firework.

...

Shame and a hangover keep Dana in bed late the next day. Only later will she learn that while she buried her head and tried to die, Tahnee on her way back from the terrace buffet encountered Scott.

“Where’s your other half?” he asked. “Sleeping off last night? Y’ know, that was some pretty fucked up shit you said.”

Balancing her tray in one hand, Tahnee weighed up all the ways this could possibly go. Then she punched him squarely in the mouth.

She’s subdued when Dana arises to find her arranging plates of fruit and yoghurt on the veranda table, and yet she seems more relaxed than in months.

… … _…_

_You’re sixteen, in the ring, and it’s the first time you’ve ever knocked someone’s tooth out. You should feel bad but you’re mainly fascinated by how long the root is and the red spilling out of his mouth._

_… … …_

The local BuenaKai population might not be impressed but everyone else is. Herc stands stiffly beside the Colliers for a formal address by Palau’s talking heads. Dana can’t meet his eyes.

Tahnee doesn’t even try: chin up, she smiles like she’s posing for Graduation portraits. Scott’s had ice on his jaw for hours to try and take the swelling down.

“What happened there?” asks a photographer.

He just laughs. “Propositioned the wrong woman for a blackout party.”

Dana—

It takes her a second to process what he said. Then, slowly, she turns to stare at him with the abject horror of realisation. Beyond him, Herc looks back at her with the same measuring, brow-creased way as before, and everything beyond her neck goes numb.

...

The Hansens walk ahead as they all troop across the tarmac to the plane that will take them back to Sydney. Herc’s shoulders are rigid; Scott’s jaw in full bloom is nearly black and swollen as a fist.

Dana elbows her twin. “Say sorry,” she says below the wind.

“For what?” _To whom?_

She knows precisely what Dana means; she’s just being stubborn. This time when she turns her head away, it’s nothing other than rejection: there’s nothing to look at except the breakwater, and the sky is cloudy.

Dana can’t blame her, but intellectually she knows that Herc isn’t Scott – didn’t deserve the jab about Angela – and she’s Corps-conscious enough to try. “How would we feel if someone asked us about Mum?”

“I only asked because of Mum.”

Still, Tahnee touches Herc’s elbow when they reach at the bottom of the stairs and raises her voice above the wind. “Sir?”

She is unaccustomed to that particular expression of fierce disinterest being directed the Colliers’ way. The straightening of her spine is visible. “What I said… I’m sorry. I was thinking about the Tatöbas, and Kracevski and Tekutyte, and our mother, and—” Her chin jerks like a record scratch. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

He’s going to stare Tahnee down, Dana realises. At least if he does, they’ll finally have an incident to point at when someone inevitably notices the friction between them all.

“ ‘s all right,” he rasps unexpectedly. “I think everyone was a li’l tightly wound. Add grog int’a that… ” He shakes his head. “ ‘s all good. Let’s just go home.” He turns to mount the stairs and pauses with one foot on the bottom rung. “But just so we’re clear: I’m going t’ assume my brother said somethin’ stupid t’ justify you cleaning his clock. But if not… Next time you take a swing at my co-pilot, it’ll be coming back t’ you.” This flat stare he extends to both Tahnee and Dana. “Clear?”

“Clear,” they say through lips of metal.

He seemed unsettled as he climbs into the cabin.

...

Sorvino meets them on the tarmac, a step ahead of LT-Father. Both men embrace their daughters so tightly the twins wonder if this is punishment for coming back at all. When they break apart, Tahnee smudges a tear away from her father’s eye with her thumb and tells him he’ll ruin his mascara.

He holds onto her all the way to the cars. Dana pretends not to notice and instead argues with her godfather about his ban on post-battle autopsy until they’ve covered at least two other topics, beginning with Yindi’s successfully lifting her head for the first time.

 ...

Scott gets an implant. It’s almost whiter than his other teeth and Tahnee gets a sort of strained too-sharp smile everytime she sees it.

...

A photographer in Palau knows someone who knows someone who decides Hansens and Colliers look good together. Before post-kaiju furore has died down, the four of them are sitting in a ritzy photography studio waiting room. High fashion or some bullshit. All the twins know is that it involves bodypaint, backless dresses, and more proximity with Scott Hansen than they’re okay with. Tahnee’s leg jiggles like a dashboard dog. She doesn’t smile when Dana points it out in those words.

When there’s a break, she pulls Dana out onto the studio’s balcony and produces a flask from somewhere.

Dana refuses; Tahnee downs the whole thing. Careful not to smudge their bodypaint, Dana loops an arm around her twin and Tahnee lays her head on Dana’s shoulder. The sun is setting: the west is red and yellow, glowing like coals, like Kurago’s plates in the Kennel lights, and between them and that: the XZ Wall, dark and impermeable.

They break apart when Scott appears to ask if they’re buggered off to Candy Mountain or what.

“You can come along if I can cut out your kidney,” Tahnee says tonelessly.

His reaction is uncertain; he seems, at last, to be growing unnerved by her. Maybe it’s the tooth.

Does it ache when she’s near, Dana wonders?

There’s a make-up change, an outfit change. When they re-take positions, the photographer leans Scott against a crate and perches Tahnee up on it, her legs crossed towards him. Her foot starts to jiggle again.

Herc’s on his mobile, apparently trying to track down an AWOL Chuck. He waves the photographer away. 

“Stop being such a pain in the arse, Harriet,” calls Scott. “It’s a fuckin’ photo. Just get over here, grab ‘em where you’re told to, and let Robbo get the shots. Right, gorgeous?” He addresses the last to Tahnee, squeezing her knee.

When it’s over, the Colliers refuse the limo and take the train.

“I could have killed him,” Tahnee mutters. A scarf is wrapped around her head as a makeshift hood, and Dana has her patrol cap pulled low, but no one seems to give a toss about two women in civvies on a random train. When Tahnee twists her head, metallic paint on her cheekbone catches the light. “Having him that close makes my skin fucking crawl.”

“We had the shot in Palau.”

“…Herc was with him.”

“So he’s collateral.”

Tahnee looks hard at Dana, like she knows Dana’s trying to get a rise out of her. “You don’t believe that.”

Dana is surprised to find that she does. “I believe that when you Drift with someone, you see who they really are. And Scott, what he said in Palau…” She peers out at Tahnee from beneath her cap feeling like the creature in the dam Grandpa always warned would reach up and drown unwary little girls who swam after dusk. Feeling like something muddy, cold, and merciless. “I believe that if you can Drift with someone like that and not react, then you’re complicit.”

Tahnee takes a long time to absorb that. Her resonance is foggy. Dana can’t get a good read on anything.

Overhead, their own faces grin down at them from drivesuits.

...

Bo is waiting on their doorstep. The women exchange a look.

Leaving the door open, Tahnee and Bo sit on the bottom bunk and desk chair respectively while Dana sits out on the steps with her headphones on. Lee Kernaghan blocks out the words but the emotions creep through.

Bo doesn’t look happy when he leaves but he’s not unhappy either. He doesn’t acknowledge Dana at all. She doesn’t expect him to.

She looks in at her twin. Tahnee opens her laptop and goes to work.

...

They ask for a week off to go back to Palau.

 _R &R_ Tahnee calls it. **_P_** _R_ , Dana calls it. Either way, Merriman concedes—with the condition of a two-man Close Proximity Protection detail.

This time they get a beachfront hut: private rental through a friend of a friend. A swathe of greenery screens it from wandering eyes; a deep veranda faces the sea. Before anything else, they drag two mattresses to the living room and throw the veranda doors wide open.

The bodyguards get the slip first thing on Day 1. The twins go sky-diving. This is in direct contravention of the four-inch-thick waiver they signed when they made Ranger vowing they would do nothing to directly endanger themselves and compromise the UN’s multi-billion dollar assets. Somehow, freefalling several thousand feet through a lens of turquoise blue, they don’t care.

The CPP boys frown at their Apology Mimosas at dinner but the twins allow themselves to be tailed for the rest of the week like good little multi-billion dollar weapons, and the guards gradually unruffle.

...

The combination of sun, sleep and low danger levels seems to be what Tahnee needs to reset. They amble through markets; take early morning runs on the beach; lounge in hammocks reading poetry and airport paperbacks instead of reports. They take photos with pythons and stingless pink jellyfish and coax the taller of their escort into taking off his Raybans and smiling, just once, on camera for posterity.

Everywhere, people see the decal on their arms and run up with smiles.

Sometimes, they catch dark glances—people rightfully angered by the destruction of the reefs, the Blue in the water, the chunks of guts and entrail that wash up at high tide. Sometimes these people explain their point of view.

The Colliers never know what to say. There’s a party line, but it sticks in their throats. Over and over they say, _We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re sorry._

It’s not enough.

They add it to the list of things they don’t know how to deal with.

 ...

The night before they’re due to leave, they lie in the hammock strung between trees behind the dunes. It’s late—not quite midnight. Somewhere further back in the trees are the men. Drinking and talking on the veranda of the hut, probably; they have learned to be unobtrusive.

Shoulder to shoulder, the twins lie listening to the sleepy mutter of birds and the roll of waves. There is no moon. The stars, like paint tipped over the sky, cluster overhead. Nothing lies between Rangers and sea but low dunes and gently-sloping shore: water and sky once again join seamlessly in the far distance like curving glass.

As if suspended in a dream they pick out constellations LT-Father taught them. Cygnus, Sagittarius, Eridanus. All those stories from people dead and gone. All those stories lost if kaiju wipe humanity off the map.

Training her ears, Tahnee listens through the wind and waves for proof of life from their guards. Dana can feel her straining.

Nothing. Maybe they’re not there at all; maybe they’re already asleep. Maybe they have ceased to exist.

So far as the women are concerned, they themselves could be the last two people on Earth.

Tahnee touches her chin to her shoulder, looking to Dana. Reaching out, she touches the scar on Dana’s chin in the gloom.

Dana remembers the maple-syrup smell of spilled radiator fluid; the ’02 Variety Bash sticker peeling off the window of the Subaru; her mother’s bare ankles below the rolled-up cuffs of her coveralls. What does Tahnee remember?

Dana’s stupefied silence. The starkness of blood on her face, and the scab that stuck around far longer than it ought to because she wouldn’t stop picking at it. That Dana can never stop picking at things.

Dana feels Tahnee’s reawakened anger: her skin warms and knuckles tingle. She still doesn’t know how to apologise.

“That was a dumb fucking thing to do,” says Tahnee. “Bo.”

“I know that _now_.”

There are a dozen nuances to the silence which follows. _Thank you for trying. Don’t do it again. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

At length, Tahnee rolls out of the hammock. Dana has to adjust quickly to avoid being thrown to the ground.

“Come on,” Tahnee murmurs. “We’re not getting any younger.” She smiles a new smile she’s been developing: sharp and sad and sweet. It cuts into Dana’s chest and stings there.

“One last swim,” Tahnee says, “before we go back to war.”

The waves here are languid—no rips, no cross-currents. Sarongs and singlets drop noiselessly to the sand as they pass through the dunes. The sisters wade naked into the swell until they can lift their feet from the sand and drift.

...

As they board the plane for Sydney, Tahnee reaches up and tugs the kiss-curls forming at the nape of Dana’s neck. “Time for a haircut, Na-na. Getting shaggy as our namesake.”

 “Quit it, ya pest,” Dana says, but playfully.

Tahnee continues to tug at them until she falls asleep.

 ...

To entertain herself while Stahl instructs Tahnee on _Dominion_ , Dana absently whistles _Dark Side Of The Moon_. Tonight they have this Rec Room to themselves—just the twins and Stahl and Krittiga, as she is Stahl’s newest target. (Dana doesn’t know him well enough to tell him that he falls in and out of love like a see-saw, but someday she will.)

_Let’s get down to biz-ness…_

“— _to defeat… Hundun_!” sings Tahnee casually, like she’s never been away.

Dana’s eyes jerk up in surprise before they pinch with laughter. “ _Jeee_ sus, I forgot we made a song for that. How long’s it been since we sang Disney?”

“I dunno. Months? Used to be the anthem back in Primary,” says Tahnee reflectively, turning a smooth white playing piece over in her hands. “Hey, you still want to go visit Priya and B?”

“Commanders,” says Stahl patiently – too patiently, putting on a show for Krittiga – “can we get back to the game at hand?”

“I’m kinda snowed under with the visor replacement,” says Dana, ignoring him, “but you should go.”

“Yeah…” The energy has gone out of Tahnee. She seems heavy again, weighted down. “Maybe I will.”

There must be something in her tone that catches Stahl – the repair technician in him, perhaps, or the big brother– because he eyes them both in a new light and says, very carefully, “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“We’re fine,” says Dana absently. “We’re just—”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am… but I was asking the other Commander.”

Dana blinks at him. This One. The Other One. Which is Dana again?

Tahnee regards Stahl with shuttered eyes. Finally she offers a smile thin as a wire. “No. But I get a little better every day.”

While he’s distracted, she devastates his forces. It’s almost worth the last ten weeks to listen to Tahnee laughing at Stahl while he bangs his head repeatedly on the table cussing out Rangers and twins and Ranger twins.

...

On the way to the hangar, Dana passes the Memorial Hall. She hasn’t been inside in a while. She wanders down the aisle examining the portraits.

When she gets to her mother, she stops. She sees now the resemblance—more strongly than ever before. Between Tahnee and Fiona, at least.

It’s in the mouth: that sweet, sad, fierce smile.

Would Fiona be proud, Dana wonders? Dana is proud, anyway.

...

It’s raining the day Herc Hansen shows up at their office and asks if he can talk to them. His hair is plastered to his head and his oilcoat drips a halo onto the concrete. Dana is alone.

He seems off-balanced by this. “Ah. Right. It’s…” He scrubs the back of his neck. “Really wanted t’ talk to both of ya about it…”

Dana is neck deep in technical specs and paperwork: Kurago’s new visor is an upgrade, and there are conversions and alterations to be made. Tahnee is on the way to Williamtown.

“I thought both of you were scheduled for office time today,” Herc says awkwardly.

Dana doesn’t lay down her tablet. “This was the only day that worked for some old friends she wanted to visit. She’ll be back at six. But if it’s important…”

“Nah.” It’s more deflation than word. “I’ll catch you both tomorrow. Nine-twenty?”

Dana spread her hands at the chaos. “We’ll be here.”

“Right-o…”

Dana studies the door for a long time after he leaves.  She considers calling Tahnee. But in the connection – stretched thin and light by distance – she feels something that’s been absent for months: peace. She tips the tablet up again and flips to a new page.

...

At sixteen-thirty, Stahl collects her for sparring practice. At seventeen-oh-eight the universe cracks open.

...

It’s not a kaiju that takes Tahnee.

The nurses don’t stop Dana clawing her way out of the blankets she wakes under and staggering to the isolation room. Several walls attack along the way. Her tongue feels like rubber: morphine. Sedative. Her arms are bloodied crepe bandage to the elbow.

In the doorway of the Iso Unit, she stands swaying.

There was no kaiju. No Jaeger.

Tahnee wrapped her ute around a tree on the way back to base in the rain. A goddamn single-vehicle accident. The body on the gurney is a wreck.

 _God_ , Dana thought numbly. _What a fucking waste_.

She’d been mid-swing when the universe fractured. Pain burst at her knees, hips, head. Her chest caved in.

Every light in Creation winked out at once.

“God,” says a tech, echoing her as he pushes a cart through the doors, “what a fucking waste.” He sees Dana as the last word leaves his lips. The silence that falls blankets Dana and takes her to the ground.

Her bones are too heavy. Her knees hurt again. She’s collapsed to them.

Tahnee is there. Tahnee is _not_ there. Tahnee is—

Tahnee is silent, and Dana is screaming, and from another universe comes a rumble of boots and voices as far off as a storm in the Philippines.

Arms press in. Warmth envelops her. Someone is talking, rumbling, vibrating.

But Tahnee isn’t home and Dana isn’t either.

… … _…_

_You are born together. You will not die the same way._

_… … …_

She isn’t on suicide watch, or in a locked ward. She’s catatonic, not violent. Her father was fine after Jayapura. Why shouldn’t Dana be?

They find her stretched out on the tray beside Tahnee. She’s pulled the drawer out of the wall and climbed up; exhausted herself to sleep with her head in the crook of Tahnee’s neck and an arm across her ribs. It’s so _cold_ here. She still won’t leave.

They’re smart enough to call Sorvino before they wake her; not smart enough to have him help restrain her. She wakes when they start lifting and the noise she makes isn’t human.

“Dana—” One begins prying, clawing at her, dragging her away from safefamiliarpartofme—

Tahnee is cold and hard but Dana clings.

Fingers work in between them. Something rips. Cosmic winds scream through the rent and there’s a hole in the world, there’s a—

“NO!”

“Dana,” Sorvino grunts, taking the place of an orderly is kicked clean across the room.

She isn’t listening. The next orderly gets three compound fractures and a cracked rib.

...

They sedate her to get her strapped down and quiet.

Her throat is raw. There’s a steady throb in her hand that says she hit something—hard. Several somethings.

The lights are dimmed some time after that.

The blankets are changed some time after that.

Vaguely, she’s aware of someone sitting by the bed. The shape is wrong for her father; so are the smell, the hair, the brush of his touch on her bandaged fingertips.

A nurse comes in with another syringe when the screaming starts.

...

Pink jellyfish brim in the water greenwarmsalty. Softness ripples down their bodies as they glide through a world of living veils.

This is Palau. The twins are victorious and united and they do not have to go back to the War.

Tahnee is ahead; Dana slightly behind. The water shades to brown—faintly brackish and tasting of rain but still warm. Tahnee looks back, eyes crinkling behind her snorkelling mask. Stretching out, she swims clear of the jellyfish in clean, powerful strokes.

This is not Palau, this is the dam. Tahnee’s hair flows free and long behind her.

A jellyfish bobs up in front of Dana’s mask. She nudges it aside.

The water beyond it is empty. Brow knit, she swims after her co-pilot. There: a flash of fin in the murk. She swims faster. So does Tahnee.

The water darkens and turns cold. Dana pushes effort into her muscles and gains speed. The water is freezing. Her lungs are burning.

She reaches out but there is no one, no one, no—

Icy air sears her throat as she breaks the surface to breathe. As her eyes clear, panic stills her heart. She treads water in a circle.

This is neither Palau, nor the dam: this is the ocean, and she knows with the native certainty of dreaming that she is the only soul for thousands of miles.

Only when she is so exhausted from treading water that her muscles seize does she sink. Water closes over her head. Her throat tightens and then—

Then it relaxes.

Dana drowns, and wakes.

No ocean. No water. She rolls to her left—or tries to. Thick straps fix her to the bed; a drip attached to her arm is half empty.

Compromising, she cranes her neck to see the next bed, certain Tahnee will have had a better dream.

Sorvino lifts his head with tears in his moustache. His thumb grates rough and damp across her forehead. “Go back to the jellyfish, kiddo,” he rasps.

...

The jellyfish are pink and soft. The dam is brackish and sweet.

Again, and again, she swims from one to the next. She rides across the flats with Kelly on the fuel tank. She sits beneath a gum by the dam, the sun on her feet and Kelly’s head on her thigh, Tahnee splashing in the water.

Again and again, the lagoon becomes an ocean.  Dust blinds her on the flats. Kelly’s head on her thigh becomes a skull – ants scouring her bones – and the waters of the dam are still.

It’s like being in the Drift: images repeat repeat repeat until they blur into one nightmare. When Dana fights to rise clear, the medication resists.

In a recurring sequence, she surges to the surface with burning lungs only to fall through it into another sea and Tahnee’s eyes bore into her from her reflection.

...

The nurse is approaching with a syringe when Dana pries her crusted eyes open.

 “You put that shit in me again,” Dana grates with a voice like rusty gears, “and I will find you and rip your heart out.”

At the alien glint in his eyes, Dana realises that in all her years of fighting she has never before seen anyone truly afraid of her.

...

She stands by the autopsy table clenching Tahnee’s tag so hard it cuts through the silencer. Thirty-seven hours, twelve minutes. Blood drips to the floor.

LT-Father stands opposite her like a reflection: same face, same posture, same uniform and it’s _wrong_. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He’s too broad, too tall, too male.

She waits for him to speak. To shout or cry or _react_. Just ‘ _I’m going for a walk’_ or ‘ _I’m sorry, Snowpea’_ or Jesus fucking Christ, _something_.

She waits for him to tell her he’s alive in there.

She leaves him standing in silence by the body, tallying the dead. Two down; three to go. A month ago today, they took down Onikuma in Palau.

...

The shower doesn’t go hot enough. It scalds her back and reddens her stomach but it’s not _enough._ Tahnee sleeps with her eyes half-open. Her eyelids are spiderwebbed with blue.

Dana hasn’t eaten anything in fifty-six hours but it still burns coming up. The shower never goes hot enough so she scrubs to make up the difference, chafing her back

stomach

knees like she can peel the rain out of her pores. Like if she can take that back, she can take back the time that pours out like water. She can take back the crash that turned a ute into a tuning fork.

She can make it so Tahnee isn’t riding alone.

Her reflection is waiting in the fogged-up mirror when she relents. Tahnee’s face, Dana’s face. White and blue with red clotted in her hair, and a voice that sounds like Dana’s but not. Wet hair clinging to her neck like circuitry. ‘ _Time for a haircut, Na-na_.’ Pink water pooling in her ear.

Dana shears blindly until her hair is barely a fringe. It’s not enough.

The clippers disintegrate on impact with the concrete wall.

...

Someone’s pounding on the door. It’s like after the Hyatt all over again. She presses back against the wall swathed in blankets. If she stays still, and warm, she can imagine—

...

The deck tech who knocks on her door at sunset goes wide at the eyes.

Dana has next to no hair and her lips are split. She’s wearing Tahnee’s coveralls.

The inside of their quarters is washed red by sundown, and when she opens the door, the boy becomes a vector painting of red-black-orange: a recruitment poster. _Join Up Now! Jaeger Corp: Protecting Your Shore_.

His throat works but he seems to have forgotten how to speak. “We’re ready, ma’am,” he croaks at last.

It’s the most formal she’s seen a tech since the Colliers’ Induction.

...

The memorial plate they’ve made is red. A fragment of Kurago. Tahnee’s name cuts starkly white over it like the inside of a wound.

Does Dana want to put it up herself?

She shakes her head. Only locking her hands at her tailbone stops them trembling.

They find a space for Tahnee between a Trooper crushed in Manila, and Fiona Collier. A triangular space to match the plate. The wall is growing armour. Dana isn’t.

Her skin is too big or too small and she doesn’t know which. There’s a hollow place inside that roars like the sea.

The tech who led her down approaches awkwardly like he wants to say something but his tongue’s pinned to the roof of his mouth. For the first time, she notices the spider patch on his chest stitched beside the name tape. He is, if she recalls, the very first tech Tahnee had a fling with after they were assigned to Kurago.

...

Bo comes to Kurago’s office after the ceremony. Dana is sitting in the darkness, dimly orange-lit by the holoscreen on standby. She hasn’t moved in over an hour, too busy staring at the other chair.

Bo’s smart enough not to sit in it. He perches instead on Dana’s desk, hands in his pockets, and looks at the chair as well.

Only after a long time does he stir himself to pull a tatty paperback from his thigh pocket. He lays it on the desk beside Dana. “She, uh… She lent me this to read. Thought you might like it back.”

At last Dana looks at him. Even in the gloom, his eyes are puffy. His jaw twitches as she stares.

Dipping his chin in acknowledgement, he bows out of the room and closes the door behind him.

Fiona’s copy of Asimov’s _Foundation_ lies on the desk looking less worn than it is, the worst of the scuffs and sticky-tape repairs hidden by the gloom. Inside the cover, Dana knows, is Tahnee’s name written in big scrawly third-grade letters under their mother’s neater cursive.

She turns back to the chair.

… … _…_

_You are nineteen and you’re… what are you?_

_… … …_

There are new faces in step-brief.  Dana doesn’t know how long they’ve been there. How long since she looked up from the manila folder in front of her?

She isn’t sure why they still issue her a folder; there’s never anything written in her agenda. Probably the same reason she still musters up.

 _Autopilot,_ murmurs a voice at the back of her brain. It sounds like Dana and yet not.

She regards the new Rangers with hollow apathy.

Nor-Iman binte Ikhane and Alastor Crane. A deaf teenage ex-acrobat from Malaysia and a black British ESL teacher. Vulcan Spectre. How long have they been here?

Dana’s nose is scraped raw from the concrete wall beside her bunk; wrapped in blankets, the concrete against her back still feels like Tahnee’s ribs.

Less than four days, then.

...

How many hours does Dana sleep in the first seventy-eight? Not enough. There is a rage in her, building out at sea. When it breaks, it will wash away everyone who ever loved her. Dana will be among them.

She reports to the deck every day after briefing. There’s never anything in her agenda; what else is there to do?

Chief peers over her clipboard and tugs her eyebrow. She does that a lot these days. Distantly, a part of Dana stirs to warn her, but it doesn’t make it to her mouth. That’s happening a lot, lately.

“Commander—” Chief begins. Then she sighs. Gestures to the filters to be dismantled and cleaned today. “Sorry, ma’am. It’s mindless, but…” _—you won’t break anything._

Dana is keeping herself alive by blocking everything noncritical. She’s learning barcodes instead of coping mechanisms, and plotting blue lines on her empty agenda like patrol sectors. Inside her head is a buzz of static and a roar like the sea inside a shell but bigger. Loud enough to swallow a city.

She doesn’t care what the job is. It’s something to do with her hands. Her mind…

Tahnee isn’t home and Dana isn’t either.

...

Patel drums a pencil on the arm of her chair, waiting out another hour. Dana isn’t ready to talk.

Patel reminds Dana that she can’t return to work until she’s been cleared by Psych.

“My co-pilot is dead. There’s no ‘returning’.”

“Is that what you want?”

In the silence, Dana jots down the barcodes of all the mechanical components Chief gave her to learn this week, before The Accident.

...

There is a strangeness to loss. First, you sleep too much. Then you don’t sleep at all. This is something nobody tells you, although they will use words like _dissociative episode_ and _fugue state_ in the same tone they used to say _co-dependency_. Blink, and the world has changed.

Blink: her co-pilot’s dead.

Blink: wet hair clings to her neck like wiring.

Blink: someone pounds on the door and it’s been eighteen hours since anyone’s seen Dana’s face.

Part of Dana thinks that’s being greedy: Tahnee’s face is plastered over every TV screen and news site, and they’re practically the same. What difference does it make if it’s Dana or Tahnee?

Blink, and there’s a new Jaeger in Bay Four and strangers in step-brief.

 ...

Vulcan Spectre takes over the bay next to the Kennel. The Kennel is closer to the Suit Room but the crews threatened to mutiny. All of them.

(Except Vulcan’s fresh-meat McNuggets, who rolled in on their girl’s skirt-train and are a little too puffed up about their Mark-III. Most of them are even younger than their pilots.)

...

There are words bandied about during the investigation like ‘ _intoxication’_ , _‘illicit substance’_ , ‘ _psychological instability’_ , ‘ _PTSD_ ’. None of it comes to anything and Dana testifies – _fiercely_ – that Tahnee was _not_ suicidal, or drunk, or high. The pathology work-up bears her out. The whispers follow anyway.

It’s not that anybody knows what happened in the Hyatt. They just can’t believe a Jaeger pilot could be plain and simple unlucky the same way as anybody else.

...

“Why,” says Alastor, “do you work the deck? That’s what the crew’s for, isn’t it?”

She regards him without expression. He made a point of sitting beside her, making conversation with Stahl, asking Kelly Nomad for advice. Now the other men have moved off (moved on; scheduled patrol) his attention settles on Dana.

Opposite him, Nor-Iman is listening intently; two tables behind her, the Hansens are watching like they’re about to see a David Attenborough Special live and in-person. (Only Chuckles is absent, because lately he seems to be in a sort of long-distance competition with Pentecost’s children over who can spend the most time with Jaegers. Last Dana heard, Mori was winning; there are hours to make up.)

Dana considers Alastor. Vulcan and Spectre are:

Serious

Stoic

Not born fighters.

In that order. They don’t look like much. These are the next generation of Rangers?

...

The new techs don’t seem to appreciate the pecking order. Several of them show up to work with busted fingers, limping on corked thighs, or just can’t find their tools. These are scuffles Dana keeps clear of, but she hears about the fallout. Most of the techs implicated don’t even wear the red or yellow: they’re _Lucky_ ’s crew.

Dana watches them from the gantry as these stroll past Vulcan wearing the white like the Maltese Cross, their swagger daring the upstarts to make something of it. Nomad’s crew are more aloof and Kurago’s crew are as off-kilter as their Jaeger at the moment, but Lucky’s crew – come hell or high water – will not be shoved around by a bunch of little punks.

Those ‘punks’ try to nickname their bay The Forge, but once they work out it’s the one with malfunctioning vent fans, it gets a new name: Hell.

It isn’t a coincidence the number of ‘conflicts’ reported (and not) rises the week there’s a heatwave.

...

Nor-Iman is in the Kwoon when Dana finds herself there at oh six hundred on autopilot. The Malay holds out a _hanbo_ to Dana. Last to do that was—

Nor-Iman is five-three. Dana has seven inches and twenty kilos of muscle on her. Dana has seven inches, twenty kilos, two combat deployments, point oh five of a second reaction speed, and fifteen years of martial arts experience on her. But Nor is five-three and she has been dodging people her whole life.

Dana hits the mat harder than she expects to. She doesn’t try to get up. Lying on the mat, she traces shapes in the black-red-white that flashes behind her eyelids, feeling the air leave her lungs, and wonders if she should let it back in. One of the shapes she sees is a proto-BuenaKai brand.

Sorvino breaks his own match to drag her into a sitting position. Dana lets him rub her back and just breathes with eyes closed so she doesn’t have to look at the brand on Nor-Iman’s arm.

 ...

One of Vulcan’s techs is stupid enough to gloat about this to one of Kurago’s. It isn’t the first thing Vulcan’s crew have said. It’s just the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

 ...

All Vulcan’s tools show up hanging from a MagnaLift in the Kennel. Two deck techs and a sparky all wearing Kurago’s red flatten four loudmouths toting Vulcan’s orange.

Merriman apparently can’t decide if he wants to strip Dana’s authority or beat her with it. Is she still a commander if she can’t pilot her vessel? He orders her to get her ‘ _bloody delinquent’_ crew under control.

She has to pull her thumbs away from her lip to speak. “They don’t have a Jaeger to keep them busy anymore and Vulcan’s crew provokes them.” Sitting with elbows on the table with hands interlaced in front of her mouth was her mother’s tic, Dana remembers abruptly. She glances up. Sure enough LT-Father is frowning at her hands. Beside him, Nor and Alastor look uncomfortable but they don’t fight the observation.

“ _You_ won’t have a Jaeger anymore if you don’t pull your head in, Ranger,” snaps Merriman.

She doesn’t have one anyway. But perhaps he means she’ll be ejected from the Rangers. All this tells Dana is that he either isn’t speaking to Patel, or isn’t listening to her.

 ...

Kurago’s crew scrub the Kennel with toothbrushes and degreaser. All of them. All of it.

Dana isn’t sure if it’s solidarity that makes her join them or a kind of masochism. She has to change out of Tahnee’s coveralls first; Tahn always complains about gunk on her bag. Complained.

The flight to Hawaii leaves tomorrow.

 ...

“Thanks for cleaning it up for us,” laugh the techs shifting crates from Hell into the Kennel as Dana farewells her crew. She isn’t sure if she deliberately slides her eyes away from the narrow looks her people give them or if they just doesn’t register as a probelem. Either way, she doesn’t bother advising Nalastor to watch their people’s backs while she’s away.

 ... 

The press who sneak past the cordon in Honolulu keep asking her when she’ll be back. Back to the combat roster? Back to training?

She didn’t glare at Hansen during the service, but it took a lot; she’s in no mood to deal with the paparazzi flocking outside the cemetery. LT-Father is a wall, but they’re relentless—slipping around him like he’s not even there.

When will she return to duty? _(_ “—lot of money to train _her_ —”)

When will she find a new Drift partner? _(_ “—lot of money to build Kurago—”.)

When will Dingo run again? _(_ “—waste of money training a late-game wash-out like Tahnee C—”

She cracks the last speaker directly in the nose, relishing the crunch. The chaos that erupts covers her escape. He’s pissing blood the way Gallowtail did but nobody congratulates her for this one.

 ...

In the hotel, Sorvino pours her a whiskey in Kelly Nomad’s room. Dana hasn’t removed her uniform jacket; Sorvino has only undone his cuffs. All three of them left their hats on the sideboard.

LT-Father stands on the balcony looking out to sea. Sorvino and Dana sit on opposite sides of the glass breakfast table with a lowball each and afternoon sun slanting across their faces.

 ...

Marshal Merriman doesn’t waste time when she arrives back in Sydney. In Dana’s absence, there has been blood here as well.

What is this hair, he shrieks. What are these fights? Is Kurago _trying_ to sabotage the image of the Program?

Dana raises her eyes to his. He doesn’t take a step back, which shows at least that he has more steel in his spine than Scott Hansen.

“I did my best,” he says, straightening his tie with no apparent awareness of how supercilious and absurd he sounds, “to persuade the suits to let you test for new co-pilots here, but I see now that this environment isn’t conducive to your continued service. You’re going to back to Kodiak. The PPDC put a lot of money into—”

Dana absorbs very little of what he says. At the end of his spiel, she echoes, “ ‘continued service’,” and then starts to laugh.

 ...

Patel presses her pencil to her temple. “I don’t suppose you’d like to talk about this?”

Dana pauses in writing out the steps of flushing a Mark-II hydraulics system. “Scott Hansen is still taking heavy duty pain-killers for his implant,” she says mildly, “even though the prescription ran out a fortnight ago. You should probably look into that.”

 ...

Before leaving for Hawaii, Dana swung her legs off a gantry, letting the safety rail cut into her ribs, and watched Kurago airlifted through the Staging Area _oculus_. It felt oddly like the rest of her insides were being pulled out by the roots and flown away from her.

Burying Tahnee – Oahu: green, briny, over-looked by tall concrete buildings, nothing like home – hadn’t helped. Being back in their quarters – half empty, too quiet –  swivelling on her chair to tell an empty bunk something she’d read, hadn’t helped. Neither had walking around off-balance expecting to run into a wall at any moment, prepping two trays in the mess, coming out of a fugue in empty Kwoon…

En route to clear Kurago’s office after the Jaeger’s departure, she heard a programmer with an orange patch on his sleeve slap his buddy and say, “Good riddance, ay? Get that relic out of the way and make room for some modern tech.”

The bitterest desk-jockeys have little enough respect for actual jockeys as it is. This one was mouthier than most.

Vulcan’s crew are the youngest, and they see dead heroes as a letdown.

_… …  …  
_

_You’re not Dingo or Kurago. Are you even a Ranger?  
_

… _…_ _…_

Hell is where the young and the stupid end up. How many of them were sent there by Kurago and Lucky’s crews? (How much was Vulcan’s crew saying “obsolete” and “more bark than bite”, and how much was Kurago’s retorting _Nalastor_?)

While Dana was away, her crew painted the Kennel red.

 “Ya didn’t need to be here,” Jill mutters later, throwing a rag onto the filthy pile between them and reaching for another. She and Dana sit on fuel drums beside Kurago’s Mobile Staging Unit, checking the stock before it’s reallocated. “Fucken mongrels. No fucken respect.”

Dana is silent as she turns a piston head over in her hands. Her nails are filthy. The standard issue beanie itches on her bare scalp. In twenty minutes she will report to Merriman’s office as ordered.

Setting aside the rag, she goes to wash her hands.

 ...

Nor-Iman and Alastor stand as a unit at the other corner of Merriman’s desk. Out of habit Dana orients herself where she normally would, leaving space for another Ranger and placing herself too close to Vulcan Spectre. Her body on that side seems to buzz with proximity. Without meaning to, she leans toward them as if her gravity has been thrown by the absence of her binary star.

With grease on her bicep, coveralls knotted at her waist, and patrol cap furled in her thigh pocket, she is not the pilot Merriman expected to show up and his face shows it. She couldn’t get her nails fully clean. More: she has adopted Stahl’s habit of wearing just a singlet beneath her coveralls and Kurago’s decal on her deltoid glares at the newcomers: less a shield than a warning.

Nor-Iman’s eyebrows twitch as Dana slurs through the motions of a verbal incident report. How long since Dana slept? Her mouth doesn’t work right anymore.

“—absurd,” Merriman says, “to indulge fraternal squabbles like this in combat crews.” Absurd, to foster this disunity. “I trust you will do better in future. Ranger Collier, you have something to say to Rangers Ikhane and Crane.”

For the first time in weeks, Dana’s shoulders pull back and her spine straightens. She is almost, for a moment, like a Jaeger pilot again.

Nalastor incline their heads when she finishes. Close enough.

 ...

Outside Merriman’s office, Alastor tells Dana to meet them in the Kwoon. The formal apology might satisfy the old man, but surely a good old-fashioned knockdown-drag out would do better for Rangers.

Dana squints at him. She’s not sure if this is for their benefit or hers. She also not sure he fully gauges the degrees to which she is (A) a better combatant than them, or (B) unstable. But she follows.

 ...

Vulcan Specter’s strength is that they strike from a distance. Dingo Kurago’s was always that she closed the distance and disabled from within the guard.

Spectre is five-three and she’s been dodging nastier people than Dana her whole life, but Dingo’s an opportunist and she’s faster. Nor slams into the mat face-first.

It wouldn’t have worked on someone taller. Someone stronger, or faster, or who knew the Collier thing about armbars. But Nor is five three and her BuenaKai tattoo presses against Dana’s navel until Nor is shrieking gutturally and hands bodily haul Dana up up up away.

“What the fuck, Collier?!”

Dana throws Scott’s hands off her and rounds on him with rage blazing beneath her skin, daring him to come close again, but he doesn’t. She turns back to her opponent.

Nor’s eyes glitter at her. Dana’s knuckles are split. Sweat stings in them when she goes to fingercomb her hair and grips only the two-inch scruff left of her fringe.

Nor is on her feet, waving Alastor away. He looks ready to come at Dana himself except there’s a freckled shoulder between them – Herc – and Scott’s beside Alastor saying,

“Back up, mate, let the ladies sort it.”

Nor’s holding her shoulder just so, and her wrist is bloodless in the shape of Dana’s hands. There’s a sardonic twist to her lips like a smile she won’t externalise. She looks like Tahnee.

Dana thrusts away the thud of her heart and leaves the Kwoon.

 ...

The journalist whose nose Dana broke tries to sue. The PPDC tells him to shut the fuck up and be happy they don’t jail him for harassment and trespassing on a military service. He’s the one who called Gallowtail an iguana.

On the eve of her re-assignment, Dana is reminded yet again not to let the public get under her skin. She stares through Merriman this time, numb to the bone.

No one comes to see her off at the airfield. (Maybe because she didn’t tell anyone she was going, and deliberately misled Stahl and Jill.)

On Kodiak, she too-carefully unpacks refolds, and stows her belongings in the single quarters she is assigned on the level above the first cadre dorms.

This is it: she’s benched. Her name is back on Death Row—the list where pilots who lose their partners go to die while the brass ostensibly tries to find them a new candidate.

After three weeks of Drift withdrawal and spending time with the current cadets, she finds it hard to care.

... 

The new class at the Academy is larger than theirs was. More disparate. More gung-ho. More importantly: it’s Day One of Phase Two. Most of the wannabes have been wicked away and what’s left are the serious contenders. Breakfast is mayhem.

Word’s gotten around about pilots. Even with the massive washout rate, everyone is convinced they are going to be the next Becket boys. The next Coyote Tango, Tacit Ronin, Diablo Intercept. Most have vetted partners already, but for the leftovers Dana represents a chance to snag a Ranger and slingshot themselves into the Conn. They’re a slavering, jostling mess, all vying for her attention, dying to prove themselves compatible so they can get onto the vaunted Ranger Roll in the foyer. Dying to die.

Dana is a means to an end: a step-ladder, a prop. The ones who are cut are cut for a reason, and the fact that they don’t understand that – that they’re so vicious in their pursuit – only proves it. Their persistence drives her deeper into her hole.

As two elbow each other trying to get directly behind her in chow line, Dana thinks of Aleksandra and Petra Mazlina: was this how Cherno Alpha’s surviving pilot felt until she was paired with the Bear of the Steppes? Her sister was shot down in an extremist attack in Kiev, 2016. Mazlina never came back to the Academy, Dana recalls; Russian command paired her off with wash-out Kaidonovsky in Vladivostok and they turned out fine. If rumour is correct, Mazline will soon by Kaidonovskaya.

And yet Dana has seen Kaidonovsky’s profile: he has a malleability she doesn’t see in any of the hyenas in this cadre. They’re too young, too hungry. They don’t know how blunt themselves to let the Drift flow. It catches on their points and tears on their edges.

Was Dana ever like that?

In the mess, she deliberately seeks an empty table. The nearest is occupied only by a shaven-headed Asian girl. Korean, by the lines of nose and cheek. No one sits with her, despite the press.

This one, Dana has noticed. The girl is younger than Dana, her habitual expression serious; not in the Big Dog something-to-prove way of the male cadets but in the clenched-jaw running-in-driving-rain way. The way Tahnee trained for competitions. The way LT-Father forced himself back into the Kwoon after Jayapura. It’s something Dana understands.

She slides onto the bench diagonal from the girl. The girl lifts her eyes coolly as Dana sits, one hand holding open a hardcopy electronics manual while the other twirls noodles onto a fork. Distant, but unhostile. Then she nods in acknowledgement of the wings on Dana’s chest and goes back to reading.

Dana swallows against the tightness in her throat and tucks into her own noodles. The girl is one of few cadets who haven’t jumped at the sight of the tab. It’s refreshing. Or soothing. Mostly, it’s a relief not to have to bite her tongue on an unstuble _fuck off_ to fend off empty overtures.

And, more strangely, a relief to be treated like she barely exists. After a month of 24/7 scrutiny, cameras, interviews, neuro-psychs wanting brain scans, showponies wanting to spar… it’s almost pleasant to be nobody.

 ...

“Ranger Collier,” chirrups the intercom in her quarters, “ _, report to Marshal Pentecost’s office.”_

‘Ranger Collier’. Dana braces both arms on the sink. From the mirror, her reflection stares back shadow-eyed and sticky, sweat drying her shirt to her skin. She has the right jaw. Right posture, musculature. But her eyes are wrong and her hair, mouth, decal…

Dana has stood in front of the mirror for an hour trying to see Tahnee. No more ‘Ranger D. Collier, Ranger T. Collier’. Never again. She doesn’t want to answer the summons. She barely wants to move.

She didn’t sleep again. Woke in the small hours; went to a practice room. Somehow katas bled into hours bled into the sky. Bleeding Dana dry. Colouring the sky purple-red-yellow. Bruising it. She chased ghosts into the light of another day.

Rustily, she reaches for the intercom. “Copy that. ETA thirty mikes.”

“Make it twenty, Ranger.” A different voice. Deeper, more still.

“Acknowledged, Sir,” she replies dutifully.

In the mirror, Tahnee’s mouth twists.

 ...

Outside his office, she waits at parade rest. A dozen times she’s stood here like this before. Only now does the corridor feel cold and sterile. Unlike her meeting with Merriman, her nails are tidy and uniform immaculate. It doesn’t make her feel more prepared.

A girl with a black pageboy haircut and short with tiny umbrellas on them is drawing at at a table beside the waiting chairs with the intense focus of the savant. At her elbow is a book opened to silhouettes of the Mark-III line. She’s drawing another.

It has been a long time since Dana saw Mori Mako.

“Do you have nightmares?” Mori asks out of the blue.

“Excsue me?”

Mori half turns to scan Dana. “I said, ‘do you have nightmares’. I know other Rangers have reported symptoms of PTSD after the severance of the Drift. Sensei says your co-pilot died. Your sister. Is that why you won’t take another co-pilot?”

And that is the most Dana has ever her Mori Mako say in a single go.

“Yes,” she says, startled into honesty.

Mori’s mouth thins.

Dana considers recanting. But odds that the girl is reporting to Pentecost or an analyst are low; odds that Pentecost hasn’t already guessed are lower. “It’s complicated,” she says instead. “But yes, I have nightmares. Every night.”

Mori takes a moment to assimilate that. Then she says, “Me too.”

“Ranger Collier.” The door to Pentecost’s office is open and he stands in the aperature like a Roman obituary frieze. He glances at the girl. “Mako.”

“I finished my report,” Mori says promptly, closing her book and rising. She takes care to tuck the drawing between the pages out of sight.

“We will review it later,” says Pentecost. “Have you eaten?”

“I was waiting for you, Sensei.”

His eyes flick to Dana as if remembering her presence. “Some things have come up,” he says mildly to his daughter. “Please accept my apologies, and extend them to Jake.”

“Hai, Sensei.” Mori straightens and bends in a bow.

Pentecost steps back into his office. “Ranger.”

Dana dips her head to Mori and follows him.

 ...

Oh-eight-hundred brings her back to the Kwoon opposing the Korean girl. It doesn’t go like she half-hoped it would.

Another Korean girl watches from the sidelines, hands on hips. This one is slightly smaller, with rounder cheeks and longer hair. Academy scuttlebutt has them as Olympic nemeses—fencers. Several years of targeted competition.

Both were solo candidates, though, and just for a second as Yuna approached to engage Dana thought, _maybe_.

But An was all thrust and jab—straight lines and angles, wanting to fight from a distance where Dana closed, clinched and sidestepped. When the Fightmaster sends them off the mat to recover, this other girl bounds up to Yuna and launches into rapid-fire Korean. The other day in the mess, she did the same thing. Then, Dana took it as her cue to leave.

Now, the fencers move together to get a drink. Dana turns to her next opponent.

... 

Come muster the next morning, the Koreans enter shoulder to shoulder. The male cadet Dana is pared with taps her _hanbo_ none too politely, reminding her _they_ are supposed to be partners.

Today, she thinks. Forever, his smirk suggests.

This is only temporary anyway; she’s being sent back to Sydney to test with her father. Pentecost’s wooden mask suggested he had thoughts on the matter, but he didn’t voice them.

The cadet is grinning like he doesn’t realise how hard he ‘tapped’ her. He probably intended it to be lighter. A joke. Playful knocking around. He doesn’t realise he overshot the mark. The fact that he doesn’t only makes her ache to be done already.

Two weeks from now is Second Cut.

 ...

An incident with one of Kelly Nomad’s Conn systems during patrol pins LT-Father down in Sdyney. He can’t come to Kodiak. Dana gets onto a plane to LAX by herself, but distantly she is touched that Pang Soo-Yi and An Yuna made a point of stopping by her quarters to say farewell as she is tying her boots to leave.

 _Your little Grinch heart started to beat,_ whispers a sardonic voice that sounds like Tahnee, _and you want to take it back into your cave and crush it with a rock_ —

Dana puts on her headphones and turns up the volume so loud flight attendants ask her to turn it down.

 ...

Upon arrival at the Thunderdome, things have changed again.

Her father is too old to begin merging with another co-pilot, someone has decided. They pair her with Sorvino. He’s heading for the cut-off too, but a younger co-pilot might hold him in the handshake for a few more years.

 ...

LT-Father comes to observe the compatibility trial. Dana’s not moving full speed and Sorvino’s not using all his moves, but they move with similar purpose, shadowing the core of Fiona and Derek Collier closely enough to sidestep and sway with strong rhythm.

She is walking off the mat (4-3) when LT-Father calls bullshit and steps onto it, shrugging out of his jumper. Merriman halts and Sorvino puts a hand on LT-Father’s arm, leaning into him, but it’s Fiona looking out at Dana from behind his eyes when he glances at her. _Put your back into it and Ranger up. If that’s the best you’ve got, you’re already dead._

Marshal Merriman turns back to watch.

… … _…_

_You are six and your father shows you how to throw a straight punch. You are nineteen, and he tells you to make it count._

… … _…_

He’s still too old for a new co-pilot. Dana sees him exchange a look with Sorvino through the glass separating the Pons from the observation room as she and her godfather sit back in the cradles. His eyes are narrowed, crows’ feet in murky relief. There’s stubble uneven ear to ear.

She closes her eyes as a Pons tech fits the squid. Takes a deep breath as the countdown starts. She knows there’s going to be some ugliness – Venator, Tahnee, Iraq – but Sorvino is a veteran Ranger. Her father is a veteran. Surely, somewhere, they will find their moment of acceptance.

There’s a whir. Blue washes her mind. Then warmth, then light. She can do this. Opening to the Drift, she steps into

\--drink the whole thing, Short Round, you started _this is crazy, Wal, we’re too old and we_ just met her, Daz, you can’t get _married on a Friday in the parish hall to an Aboriginal woman in a white dress and behind her, yellow ribbon at her waist, is_ Fiona says she’s having twins _with hair so short they look like boys, Christ, Daz, maybe you shoulda_ asked for Sons, you’re a spineless pale pathetic lot and you haven’t got a _clue why you’re doing this Daz they’re going to go whether you want ‘em to or not—_

Dana exhales. They’re stabilising. Equalising.

Sorvino lands a barramundi. Dana eats fish on a Tasmanian boat at dusk. Sorvino watches a sunset with his arms around his wife. Dana kisses—

She opens her eyes.

“They’re levelling out,” reports a lab tech.

Opposite the cradles, behind the glass, LT-Father punches the table. Beside Dana, Sorvino jolts. The Drift retracts then surges.

 _\-- the wreck of Venator eight kilometres offshore, we’re going in for a closer_ look at those _WAVES breaking into her chest are defeaning like the thunderous drone of approaching gunships blaring a_ warning reactor breach warning reactor _breach_ _is opening, we’re off to_ fight free Jesus he’s coming back, what the fuck is wrong with this harness, Fiona FIONA! --

Sorvino’s memory of Venator’s wreck is strong and sharp. The past hurls Dana into a riptide. Memories slam her like a headbutt from Gallowtail and she wants to scream but her throat is locked up. Oily white light swells up, burning from the inside out, she’s—

\-- _burning_ , _smoke scorching her_ eyes, Fiona _, Christ, open them_ , honey oozing down the jar we should have got a squeeze-bottle look at that _mess of her body half-crushed between the plates and she’s screaming screaming screaming like childbirth and primaeval_ terror attack in Kiev, Derek, we’re not letting them go into that, they’re just _kids running down the dirt road to meet the ute, screaming “Uncle_ Wal, she can’t see it, don’t let her _see Rako coming back and the Conn is shaking, what the FUCK is wrong with this harness—_

It shouldn’t be like this. It isn’t _meant_ to be like this. Dana can feel Sorvino fighting to get it under control but it’s getting away from him. Panic is freezing his mind. He’s caught in the Drift, chasing the RABIT. He’s reliving LT-Father’s memory of waiting to die—so Dana is too.

\-- _the Conn’s_ _caved in like folded paper, LOCCENT, we trapped; the cradle’s twisted and I can see the arm but I_ _can’t_ do what you have to, Wal, if she goes back she could _die here, mate, I din’t sign up for this;_ _all we were spose’ta be doing was flying escort and now we’re playin’ hide and Seek with fucken hajjis_ —

Dana tries to reach out. Like a rabid dog the Drift snaps back at her.

\-- _two_ _screaming one-year-olds at three-thirty every morning is too much for me alone, Derek, I’ve been awake since_ two, we’re having TWO, Wal can _you_ _put some pants on, girl, it’s goddamn_ frosty little thing, aren’t you, Snowpea? Gonna have to warm up if you wanna make some _friends don’t let friends start_ fights like that, Na-na, even if he _started the motor on the first try, didn’t ya,_ kiddo’s stronger than she looks, aren’t you, _Tahnee walking into the water on Kodiak, stones smooth on the undersides of her_ feet’ll drop off in that _water’s not that cold and besides, Na-na, we’re Rangers now, say it with me Raaaa_ anger Fiona Collier reported killed in an engagement with Category Two kaiju Rako late this afternoon in Jayapura—

 Dana’s skull is blowing apart. Distantly she hears shouting and rattling metal. Smells burning plastic. Sorvino is fighting for control. But he can’t keep a leash on everything they’ve lost. He loses.

Surging, white builds like a wave and then crashes down and sweeps Dana away.

\-- _blood and dirt and rain in Tahnee’s clothes, she’d never let me hear the end of getting her_ filthy and burning with blue dripping from their _arm broken and_ _spikes of hair matted to the side of her head, all black with rain and_ blood all of the Staging Area what kind of _Raaaaaanger, say it with me Na-_ na, I can’t get loose, Fiona FION —  

Fiona and Tahnee blend into one. Fiona/Tahnee dead on autopsy tables, what little of them could be extracted, dead from crushing wounds, always crushing wounds…

Dana _feels_ the nausea rise in Sorvino’s stomach, in her father’s behind the glass. Everything she has ever been is being sucked into the maelstrom and churned together. She’s not Dana, she’s Fio-nee-na she’s—

LT-Father’s eyes meet hers. Abruptly, he bends out of view. The taste of vomit sours her mouth.

Dana tears free of the Pons. It feels like ripping out her spine. With that gone, there are no shouts, no Drift, no connection: there is only _her,_ alone in her head. With Tahnee. With Venator.

She runs.

She runs and runs, and only when her legs start to finally shake does she collapse on a disused loading dock by the bay and start to cry.

There was no ‘moment of acceptance’. Only pain and terror, raw as being flayed. Over and over again.

She feels contaminated. Her insides are rotting. There’s something evil inside and she doesn’t know how to excise it.

The monitoring electrodes are still attached to her neck, wrists and chest, wires torn off. She removes them. One by one, lays them out beside her. _Then_ she lets it out.

A flock of pipstrels down the beach is scared into flight. Her throat goes hoarse before the screaming stops.

Eventually sobs subside to sniffles. Sniffles to hiccups. Finally she lies on her side in silence, tears and snot mingling on her chin.

The sickness is gone. She just feels flayed. Turned inside out. Like a Kaiju rotting on the sand. Like Venator lying gutted in the surf or Tahnee on an autopsy table.

...

It’s Stahl who finds her in the dark. He eases himself down beside her at the pontoon’s edge, murmuring about the uproar her egress caused. He breaks off when it’s evident this is the last thing she needs to hear.

She shouldn’t let him pick her up off the deck. Shouldn’t need to borrow a shoulder to hold herself up. But she does.

The smell of salt and hot metal and grease on him is her mother— _her_ memory, not Sorvino’s (LT-Father’s). There’s a whiff of ginger about Stahl from the mess. He discreetly looks away while she wipes her nose, and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

Her logical mind knows he won’t bring any of them back. But she wishes he could. When it turns into a physical ache, spreading from her heart to her head and filling her up with Tahnee’s _absence_ , she starts to cry again.

He’s not the one she wants to hug her—not _any_ of the ones. But he’s all there is. He lets her go with it.

It’s the first time ever the uniform hasn’t made her feel _safe_. Stripping off her jacket, she flings it behind her and shivers in her cams and t-shirt. Goosebumps run rampant up her arms that have nothing to do with the air. It’s a spring night and the sun has gone but it’s muggy at best. Still she’s sweating and shivering at the same time. That should be a very bad sign.

There are no lights on this pontoon; only on the buildings across the harbour. The darkness feels safe. Stahl’s arm around her shoulders feels _safe_. Slowly, with him holding her edges together, she folds the substance of herself back into place, bit by bit.

There are threads mixed in with the pieces that she _knows_ aren’t hers. A street-eatery in Cebu. Her mother, out of uniform and laughing as Dana-Walt-Derek spins her. Four men drunkenly howling _Copperhead Road_ in a dining hall. The sting of a desert wind scouring her cheeks as she ducks across the tarmac in pre-dawn.

These are not her memories. But she knows them.

Under the salt and metal, Stahl smells male. His hand on her arm is rough with calluses, and she can feel the heat of his neck through her forehead. The sensations grind her back to Earth after the half-reality of the Drift. His pulse through his coveralls is Kurago’s.

 ...

Sorvino tells them it was her RABIT. She doesn’t correct them.

If she thinks about it, she can tell herself it was too soon. Sorvino just couldn’t keep everything they’ve lost out of his head. But when she looks at her father, he evades her eyes, and from the way both men push around their food at dinner, their stomachs still churn.

So the labtechs put Dana down for extra psych assessments – someone other than Patel – and a woman with a soft blonde plait and hard brown eyes asks her what she saw.

She says ‘ _Jayapura’_. It’s 100% honest. She just doesn’t elaborate.

 ...

The Drift sensory recording is mysteriously corrupted: viable, but fragmented. The postcard casually pressed into her hand by the Hughie who passes that along over lunch (“ _Came in the mail while you were away.”_ ) is addressed _Rangers Collier, Dingo Kurago_. It’s signed Trent Lindsey and the picture is a Hawk squadron in formation over the Academy. It’s also dated 13/08/17—four days before Palau.

The mess staff shoot filthy looks when they see the food untouched on the tray she slides into the collection rack.

 ...

“Aren’t they feeding you up north?” Scott laughs when she walks into the Kwoon looking for her father. “Where’s the rest of that arse?”

Sorvino cracks him in the face with a _hanbo_.

That takes so long to break up that by the time the men have been separated (“ _Christ, keep it practical, Sorvino—” “—middle of a sparring match, Herc, if he can’t keep his eyes where they’re ‘sposed ta be—”)_ that LT-Father has pulled a swiftie and Dana’s lost her taste for confrontation.

 ...

Derek doesn’t come to the airfield the night she flies out either. It’s a hot night; too hot for October. Too hot for more than cams and a tee. Sun’s long set but heat still rises off the tarmac like steam. (Kaiju Blue climate change messing with the already rampant El Niño/ La Niña cycles for longer hotter summers, starting earlier.) It just feels _wrong_. The weather isn’t the only thing out of whack.

It’s not that she wants to see him, but it’s three flights and thirty-six hours back to Kodiak Island and they might not be in the same place again for months. Maybe longer. But he isn’t here. It’s just Dana, Air Squadron ground crew, staffers hitching a ride, and Sorvino.

There’s a muted murmur around them of the other Corpsmen talking about the Beckets and their Mark-III and the slaughter of Yamarashi three days gone (that clean-up is the only reason this flight is going direct to Los Angeles) but Sorvino and Dana regard each other in silence. He doesn’t say goodbye. Doesn’t offer apologies.

Instead it’s a wordless, sad smile and tight hug and a book pressed into her hands much the same way as the postcard. Dana’s crying when they break apart. There’s a bitter edge to Sorvino’s smile.

He pushes the paperback into her hand and steps away, forcing her to take it. She bites her lip at the title. Looks up at Sorvino. _Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Symptoms and Management Strategies._

It’s old, dog-eared. That he has it, that he’s giving it to her…

She wants to tell him _thank you_ , and _sorry_ , and _look after my father_ but it all gets gummed up on her tongue in the heat.

Sorvino grips her shoulder, still giving her that sad bitter smile, and bumps their foreheads together.

Dana’s the one who has to pull back. She doesn’t want to. The plane is boarding, and the airman who sticks his head off the cargo ramp thinks he’s quite a joker: _All aboard for Tinseltown and Freeze-Your-Nuts-Off Island._

Dana glances back as she mounts the ramp (book clutched in one hand). Sorvino’s still there, hands in his cam pockets, waiting for the plane to leave. He looks lopsided without his co-pilot; Dana wonders if she looks like that now too.


End file.
